Group+Assesment



Today in Society (reasons cultivation is so prevalent) Today, society is relying more and more on technology and individuals have become constant daily users of media sources more than ever before. New technologies are developing at such a fast pace that resent research and studies show that sooner or later TV might be a thing of the past.

SNL Kagan estimates that by the year 2014, about 46.3 millions homes will have at least one TV with a broadband connection to the Internet and 7 % of all households will depend on the Web instead of pay TV to watch professionally produced content. More over they have now predicted that 16.5 million homes have a Web TV device and 825,000 use it to watch Hollywood TV shows and movies.

..................................     Seven media companies account for 90% of all professionally produced video that people watch, which includes CBS, Disney, Discovery, Fox, NBC Universal, Time Warner and Viacom.

On average family households are subscribers of an average of 130 channels, which is 48% more than the average in 2000. However, no one really watches all 130 channels yet they are being paid for and the average monthly cost for each channel that people in a household actually watch at least once a month has increased about half a million dollars in the past 11 years.

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Lieberman, David. 01. January 2011. "Is it time to cut the cord on cable TV".16 February 2011. EBSCO HOST. .======

Issues with the Current State of Cultivation Theory

The Following are 6 criticisms of the Cultivation Theory, made by Dmitri Williams, of which we support:
 * 1) Non-falsifiability - Researchers can essentially use this theory to say anything they want. It needs to be refined.
 * 2) Imprecise content measures - Content is imprecise & hard to specify. Studies are generally too broad and contain too many variables.
 * 3) Imprecise exposure measures - When does exposure start? How long does it last for. Can't really tell when we are being cultivated.
 * 4) Ambiguity between "media" and "real" answers - How do you really asses what is considered part of "media world" and what is "real life".
 * 5) Spurious causation - impossible to tell what was really the cause of a certain action. Who is to say that it isn't because of something else?
 * 6) Ignoring variation in viewers - Not all viewers take in media the same way.



Ways to move Forward

We are all consumers of television and many times do not realize the effect that our viewing has on our view of the world. While this theory is useful and important to our society, there are steps that can be taken to better understand how television effects our society. One of the issues with the current state of cultivation theory is that many of the studies are general and are all measured in different way thus resulting in inconsistencies. Too many variables play a role when it comes to cultivation so its hard to measure what effects what, and every person is affected differently. Currently, researchers are beginning to take into consideration psychological processes a person goes through while ingesting the messages buried within television programs. These processes, such as attentiveness, actually help regulate a person’s understanding of reality. Also, the difference between "heavy viewers" and "light viewers" is not entirely clear in terms of what they are viewing. A "heavy viewer" of television might be someone who is spending more than four hours watching sitcoms, or someone who is spending four hours watching "The Discovery Channel" or "Animal Planet". Obviously the viewer who is spending more time watching sitcoms will be more influenced in terms of social behaviors. Moving forward with the cultivation theory, we think that researchers should take into account the different types of viewers and the amount of informative information Americans are receiving. As research furthers, more and more variables become critical in testing this cultivation theory, meaning that the surveys and experiments need to become more complex as well in order to incorporate all the factors that go into how we as society perceive the world around us.