ABSTRACT
Media cultivation research assumes that TV is the main cultural arm of society and that enculturation is TV’s primary function. Cultivation researchers have argued that experimental and quasi-experimental research techniques are inappropriate to assess the effects of TV exposure. First, message-system analysis content-analyzes the composition and structure of TV messages. Second, cultivation analysis examines people’s social-reality beliefs, presumably formed from TV viewing. Cultivation studies have differed in their definition of heavy and light viewing. Researchers have criticized the assumptions and method of cultivation research, including the reduction or elimination of cultivation effects by using demographic controls or controls for residence, personality traits, experience with crime, or viewers’ acceptance of TV reality. Another concept, resonance, refers to the congruence of TV messages with everyday reality, which amplifies cultivation patterns by providing “a coherent and powerful ‘double dose’ of the television message”.
