Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research - Nancy Signorielli - Paperback

As a broad-based research agenda with a challenging set of theoretical and methodological procedures, cultivation analysis, initiated by George Gerbner, stands out as one of the dominant and most promising contemporary approaches to the study of mass communication. Cultivation analysis is an active, ongoing and influential research tradition, designed to assess the contributions of television viewing to people's conceptions of social reality. It attempts to determine the extent to which people who watch greater amounts of television hold different conceptions of social reality from those who watch less, other things held constant. It is concerned with cumulative correlates and consequences of television exposure rather than short-term responses to or individual interpretations of television content. It focuses on the implications of accumulated exposure to television's most general, insidious, and inescapable images and values. This unique volume brings together some of the most recent developments in the conceptual, methodological, and substantive aspects of cultivation analysis, and includes chapters by the original investigators as well as by independent researchers who have taken up the questions and challenges that this approach raises. Contributors present critiques of the conceptualization, theoretical and methodological frameworks of cultivation analysis, examine the psychological and cognitive processes by which cultivation occurs, and the impact that changes in the delivery of mass mediated messages may have on it. They also focus on the application of cultivation theory and analysis in international and intercultural contexts and on the new light it throws on cultural indicators such as religious television, pornography, and fear and the 'Mean World Syndrome'. The book ends with an epilogue by George Gerbner reflecting on the recent advances described in the book and suggesting a future agenda for cultivation analysts to pursue.Signorielli, Nancy is the author of 'Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research - Nancy Signorielli - Paperback' with ISBN 9780803932968 and ISBN 0803932960.