Communication Theories - Report Example

A Critical Analysis of “Some Processes in the Cultivation Effect,” By Robert Hawkins and Suzanne Pingree First Professor Date Abstract A critical analysis of the ‘cultivation effect’ research, conducted by Robert Hawkins and Suzanne Pingree, on Australian school children, is carried out. The methodology adopted by the researchers, including detailed description of control variables introduced, is comprehensively explained. Any similarities, as well as the differences, in researchers’ approach with Gerbner and Gross’s method, are pointed out. The qualitative as well as quantitative data is properly explained and the researchers’ justifications for the deviant data values are also analytically evaluated. The findings, which stated that the very young audience is not psychologically mature enough to get ‘cultivated’ by television, and perception of a ‘violent’ world is associated with the amount of crime related dramas and cartoons seen by the children, are adequately explained. Any shortcomings in the researchers’ approach and logic, such as, small research period, and generalized control variables, are discussed. Proper recommendations, for instance, advanced study of preconceived notions in children over a long period of time, are provided. Introduction In 1976, while exploring the continuing effects of extensive television viewing on American audience, George Gerbner and Larry Gross introduced the ‘cultivation theory.’ The primary conclusion of their research was that prolonged exposure to violence related material on the television, results in the formation of a societal reality in the minds of the viewers, which further dictates their thought formation and alters their social behavior (Gerbner and Gross, 1976). To further this hypothesis, Robert Hawkins and Suzanne Pingree, in 1977, conducted a detailed research, to study how exactly cultivation effect takes place, and what variables can enhance or diminish it. In 1980, they documented their findings in a publication titled “Some Processes in the Cultivation Effect,” which is the subject of this paper. This paper will analyze how Hawkins and Pingree, in the light of ‘cultivation hypothesis’, formulated their thesis, conducted research, and interpreted qualitative and quantitative data. Furthermore, this paper will suggest any revisions, deemed necessary, to their adopted research methodology, along with the recommendations that can enhance their findings. Hawkins and Pingree’s research was based on the already established fact that the viewers highly exposed to television programming, both aggressive and non aggressive, would carry a certain amount of prejudice in their social outlook. They were also influenced by the contrasting and contradicting studies conducted by various researchers in other parts of world, controlling numerous variables, such as Doob and McDonald’s study of cultivation effects among various demographics in Toronto, Canada (1979), and Wober’s research in Great Britain (1978). These studies showed that the effect of television on viewer’s perception is certain, however, what is still unknown is the exact ‘size and importance of that effect’ (Pingree and Hawkins, 1980). Generally, it was observed that, when controlling a third variable, there was no strong relation between watching violent programming and fearing that viewer himself would get involved in a similar scenario. One of the reasons could be that people in other parts of the worlds were unconsciously aware that their society was different than that of America, and therefore, were not impacted that much by American programming. Furthermore, not much research had been done involving controls that would illuminate the exact process of cultivation in the children. There had been studies involving age as a variable, and discovering that children in the learning stages are usually more susceptible to the television messaging systems, as compared to very young and an older audience (Drabman et al, 1976). Another research done by Hawkins considered the preconceived perception of television’s actuality as one of the variables (1977), and discovered that the belief in ‘Magic Window Reality’ (considering television as the real life unfolding), decreased uniformly with age. However, belief in ‘Social Expectations Reality’ (believing television does not depict real life), increased till sixth grade, and then stayed constant. Hawkins and Pingree’s primary purpose was to introduce various variables to alter the social and psychological conditions of their sample children and ultimately tie the cultivation process of the subjects to the nature of the content viewed on television. Their subjects were around 1280 school children of grades 2, 5, 8, and 11, living in the city of Perth, Australia. They studied effects of modifying various variables, such as age, socioeconomic groups, content of the television program, and viewing pattern, on the cultivation hypothesis, the findings of which are discussed in the next section. Research Methodology and the Interpretation of Results The choice of Perth, Australia as the subject city was because of rampant broadcasting of American programming on the local stations. It had around 800,000 residents, and comprised of a homogenous population of rich, middle class, and white collar residents. Hawkins and Pingree utilized the format developed by the Gerbner in his primary research, and formed a lengthy questionnaire for the eighth and eleventh graders. These questions were independent of each other, and were designed to study the children’s already established notions about the danger in the society and the actual amount of violence taking place. A sample question is shown below to describe the nature of these questions. During any given week, what are your chances of being involved in some kind of violence? ____ About one in ten _TV_ About one in 100 In this question, the second option is a television biased answer. In addition, researchers, utilized Gerbner’s previous research and findings, and developed a set of positively and negatively phrased sentences, and asked students, on a five point scale, to either agree or disagree with these sentences. Two sample sentences are given below: Most of the time, people try to be helpful. Mostly people are just looking out for themselves. In addition to the surveys, the students were also asked to keep a four-day journal of their television viewing, to track various kinds of programmes they usually watched in evenings. The programmes were divided in seven different categories, such as ‘situation comedies,’ and ‘crime and adventure,’ and students were asked to track the amount of minutes spent on viewing each category. To ensure authenticity, the parents of second graders were asked to fill in their children’s journals. The results showed that the eighth graders watched the most amount of television each night, spanning around 4.25 hours, and the second graders watched the least amount, almost 2.52 hours. Hawkins and Pingree contested using only a four-day journal by stating that long-term data, involving children, usually encounters reliability issues, and in their case the four day period certainly mirrored the long-term behavior of viewers. Later on, students were asked on a four point scale, from ‘never’ to ‘often,’ to reveal whether they would watch a certain kind of program The foremost general discovery was that, as compared to previous years, the children in Perth had started watching more television. Also, changing separate social, demographical, and psychological factors had little to no effect on the relationship between television created bias and amount of exposure. In detail, the results of lengthy surveys conducted on higher classes, showed that children who gave a TV biased answer watched more television. Furthermore, the answers from set of positive and negative set of sentences were utilized to develop a Mean World Scale Index, and it was discovered that the negatively phrased sentences were directly related to the amount of television viewed. The findings also showed that it was hard for the two graders to distinguish between sentences that related to a ‘mean’ world from those that were related to a ‘nice’ world. It was further discovered that for older children, the image of a ‘nice’ world was not the result of a cultivation effect; however, the ‘mean’ image did result from the exposure to the television. It should be noted here that these findings were helped by the Gerbner’s already established pronouncements that young children are not as susceptible to complex messages on television as compared to older children. Also, in all of the results, especially in the surveys done on eights and eleventh graders, the major theory proposed by Gerbner held true, and it was evident that the answers of the violence based questions were positively correlated to the time spent watching the television. In fact, it is obvious that the majority of Hawkins and Pingree’s research methodology, and structuring of the surveys, was based on the previous findings of Gerbner and his associates. When studying the viewing patterns between different program categories, the strongest positive correlation existed between watching ‘crime related adventure shows’ and believing in ‘violence in society.’ Surprisingly, the same was true for the relation between ‘cartoons,’ and ‘violence in society.’ Though, Hawkins and Pingree failed to state a concrete reason for this anomaly, they proposed that this could be because of the violence, albeit in a funny way, shown in the cartoons. Another strong correlation existed between the ‘game shows’ and again ‘violence in society,’ and researchers proposed that it could be because game shows increase the belief in the competitiveness within the society. Hawkins and Pingree also introduced a new variable within the older students, which was studying in a media studies class, and studied it’s relation with over all perception of violence in the society. Some of older students have adopted the option of taking a media related class, and were asked to fill out the designated surveys. The results showed that the students taking media classes perceived the society to be more violent, and also watched more television programming as compared to other students. It was also discovered that cultivation effect is not limited to America, and can be simulated in other parts of the world. However, researchers did notice that when Wober conducted similar simulations in Great Britain, he did not meet with much success (1878). This was attributed to the fact that British audience had a preconceived notion that their culture is too different from that of America, and were therefore, not too influenced by American programming. On the whole, it is obvious that Hawkins and Pingree based their research on the hypothesis already stated by Gerbner, and designed their methodology to test this hypothesis. No new theory was put forward by these researches; instead their experiments resulted in extensions to the previous research. Also, any anomalies found in the data, for example, relation of cartoon viewing to the opinion of aggression, were unsatisfactorily explained. In general, their conclusion showed that the younger children lack the cognitive skills required to utilize the messages shown in television and apply it to their thinking process, and watching ‘crime related programs’ and ‘cartoons’ increased the likelihood of thinking the world as a ‘violent’ place. Discussion of Numerical Results The prominent numerical findings and a summary of quantitative data is shown in the following two tables, which are taken from Hawkins and Pingree’s article: TABLE A - Correlations between Total Viewing and Cultivation Measures with Partials on Conditional Variables Mean World Violence in Society Total Viewing 0.16 0.28 Controlled for: Grade 0.17 0.25 Sex 0.14 0.28 Social Expectations 0.16 0.27 Magic Window 0.14 0.28 Media Studies 0.15 0.25 Newspaper Reading 0.14 0.27 Current Events Knowledge 0.17 0.27 SES 0.11 0.25 Aus. – US Comparison 0.14 0.27 All Controls 0.12 0.20 TABLE B – Correlations between Content Types and Belief in Mean World and Violence in Society Mean World Violence in Society Television News 0.04 -0.03 Television Documentaries 0.01 0.01 Situation Comedies 0.05 0.0666* Crime Adventure Shows 0.0666* 0.1666* Drama -0.04 -0.01 Music/Variety 0.0 -0.02 Game Shows 0.03 0.1444* Cartoons 0.00 0.1444* Children’s Shows 0.00 0.0777* Sports 0.01 0.02 The points worth noting in table A are that the top row shows that the cultivation effect was most efficiently imitated in the Australian culture. This table depicts controlling of various social and demographical factors, and their effect on two dependent variables, which were perceptions of world as ‘mean’ and ‘violent.’ The table generally shows that changing these various societal factors have relatively low or negligible effect on the dependant variables. One exception worth noting is the lowest value of 0.11 in this table, which shows the relationship between the ‘social class’ and the discernment of ‘meanness’ in the society. The researchers observed that students from lower social class expected the world to be far more selfish as compared to other students. The researchers proposed that this could be due to their past bitter experiences rather than actual viewing of television programs. In this case, researchers yet again provided a generalized explanation for an exception in the numerical data. It is not necessary that majority of the students, who belonged to a lower social class, faced hardships in their life. However, this trend was not observed in younger children, thus strengthening the theory that young viewers are probably too immature to pick up symbolic messages shown in television and relate them to their actual life. Table B is much more straight forward and shows that a highest correlation of 0.16* exists between watching crime adventure shows and perceiving the world as a violent place. Game shows and cartoons tie on the second place with the values of 0.14*. An interesting factor observed here, which researchers failed to adequately describe, is that cartoons have a high correlation in portraying the world as a hostile place, but have a zero correlation in depicting it as a mean place. Though Hawkins and Pingree’s research plays a crucial role in adding to the Gerbner and Gross’s research; it contains certain shortcomings, which are discussed in next section. Proposal One of the faults that lied with the Hawkins and Pingree’s methodology was collecting data over an extremely short-term period. Whereas, the cultivation theory lies on the foundation of studying long-term consequences of television exposure on viewer’s thinking process and behavior. Interestingly, it is observed, that majority of research done in this regard is short term. However, carrying out a comprehensive long term analysis can yield many interesting discoveries, such as presence of a threshold or a ceiling. This will show whether cultivation process needs a certain level of psychological maturity to begin, and conversely, after years and years of exposure, is it possible for cultivation to stop occurring (Potter, 1993). Another flaw lied in the division of the television programming into seven categories, which can be seen as too broad generalizations. For example, Drama and Documentaries include various types of programs, and cannot be considered as one category. Therefore, for further experimentation, television programming should be divided into more specific groups. Also, many researchers have stressed that the key factor in the cultivation effect is the underlying notions of reality that are ingrained in a viewer’s mind (Potter, 1986). This concept was discussed by Hawkins and Pingree, but was not sufficiently explored in their adopted research procedures. This factor is also extremely hard to study in young children, as they are rapidly going through developmental stages, and develop different perceptions each day A proposed and an acceptable extension to the research procedure would be surveying students at the beginning of term, and then showing specific themed movies over the year, and again questioning them at the year end. With this method, the initial preconceived ideas of the children will be known, as well as any changes in thinking that might occur during the year. This procedure could be done for more than a year, such as, covering the entire school life of a student. This is certainly an imposing task, but it could expose entirely new dimensions of cultivation hypothesis. References Doob, A. N., & Macdonald, G.E. (1979). Television viewing and fear of victimization: Is the relationship causal? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 170-179. Drabman, R,. D. Hammer, & G. Jarvie. (1976). Children’s perceptions of media portrayed sex roles across ages. Jackson: Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of Mississippi Medical Center. Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: the violence profile. Journal of Communications, 26, 182-190. Hawkins, R.P. (1977). The dimensional structure of children’s perceptions of television reality. Communications Research, 4, 299-320 Hawkins, R.P., & Pingree, S. (1980). Some processes in the cultivation effect. Communication Research, 7, 193-226. Potter, W.J. (1986). Perceived reality and the cultivation hypothesis. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 20, 2, 159-174. Potter, W.J. (1993). Cultivation theory and research: a conceptual critique. Human Communications Research, 19, 4, 564-601. Wober, J.M. (1978). Televised violence and paranoid perception: The view from great Britain. Public Opinion Quarterly, 42, 315-321. Read More