Prelude to Cultivation Analysis: a Whole New Medium

As we described in the previous chapter, cultivation emerged in the shadow of two contrary historical trends: while the prevailing intellectual discourse held that media effects were, at most, limited, heightened concern about television and violence dominated public and Congressional discourse. It was in this atmosphere that Gerbner and Gross (1976) built up their case against both the prevailing apologia and the more simplistic “monkey-see, monkey-do” violence hysteria of the day by pointing to some unique and unprecedented characteristics of television. Their initial empirical testing of cultivation in the mid-1970s grew directly out of these arguments about the nature of television and its role in society. Although these assumptions have been questioned by many, and despite some obvious institutional and technological changes in television since then, these “starting points” should nevertheless be reiterated briefly.

First, overall amount of exposure to television dwarfs the use of most other media for most people. People simply do not, on the average, spend as much time with other media or in other leisure pursuits as they spend with television. There are of course voracious readers, movie fanatics, mouse potatoes, web surfers, magazine devotees, and those who never turn off the radio (whether they're wearing it as headgear or not). But for most people, television dominates the media diet.

Second, exposure to television begins before we first use most other media. Most people under fifty have been watching television since before they could read or probably even speak.