Cultivation Theory & Local News Ryan Phillippi

This article goes into detail about how the public believes that violent crime is a widespread national problem in the US despite the declining trends in crime. The authors have a hypothesis that fear of crime is in part a by-product of exposure to crime-saturated local television news.

Cultivation Theory is used to suggest that fear of crime is fueled in part by heavy exposure to violent dramatic programming on television. Exploration of a related hypothesis indicates that the Cultivation Theory’s predicted effects of television on the public are true. The authors use national surveys to support their research. 2. Lee, C. , & Niederdeppe, J. (2011). Genre-Specific Cultivation Effects: Lagged Associations Between Overall TV Viewing, Local TV News Viewing, and Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention. Communication Research, 38, 731-753.

This article incorporates recent studies that have found that exposure to local television newscasts is associated with a variety of problematic “real-world” beliefs. These studies were controlled for a variety of demographic characteristics and media use variables. A two-wave national representative survey is analyzed to know the correlation between local TV news viewing and fatalistic beliefs about cancer. Analyses provide evidence that local TV news viewing predicts increased fatalistic beliefs about cancer. 3. Kahlor, L. , & Eastin, M. S. (2011).

Television’s Role in the Culture of Violence Toward Women: A Study of Television Viewing and the Cultivation of Rape Myth Acceptance in the United States. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55, 215-231 This article approaches cultivation from a feminist prospective that recognized television as a source of cultural norms embedded in a culture of violence towards women. Results show that general television consumption significantly relates to rape myth beliefs among men and women. Also, there is a negative relationship between crime-show viewing and rape myth cceptance. Crime-show viewing directly correlates to the overestimation of false rape accusations. 4. Morgan, M. , & Shanahan, J. (2010). The State of Cultivation. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54, 337-355. This article investigates television’s contributions to viewers’ conceptions of social reality. This article reviews the history of cultivation theory and takes stock of recent trends within the field. Changing media is contributing to the future prospects for cultivation research. This article will mainly be used to introduce cultivation theory to the reader. . Appel, M. (2008). Fictional Narratives Cultivate Just-World Beliefs. Journal of Communication, 58, 62-83. This article identifies several misrepresentations on television and shows that the more television people watch, the more their beliefs correspond to the television world. Fictional narratives are believed to be powerful in changing audience beliefs. While local news is not fictional, many of the stories may not be local and can still change the beliefs of the local audience. The general amount of television viewing positively relates to mean-world and scary-world beliefs.