Cultivation and Video Games

Here's an interesting video on cultivation and videogames that a student seems to have made. Very slick, very accurate, very impressive.



the link to the youtube page

More Cultivation from the O.G., Original Gerbner

Another late 90s gem from the Media Education Foundation featuring UPenn's brightest star in MassComm. Here, Gerbner expans on the sorts of characters and types of stories that tend to be told on TV and reiterates his theory of its effects.



Please note that the MEF videos use a version of remix that passes as a sort of "academic culture jamming." They select certain clips and display them out of their original contexts to support their points. Then, this for profit (albeit small) enterprise criticizes big media for constructing messages with "something to sell." This has raised the ire of some as hypocritical (their videos cost $150+). With the accessibility of editing software and a multitude of pop culture clips free on the web, now students can practice their own culture jamming as an exercise of democratic speech. That's what I'll be asking you to do with the remixing assignments we take on this semester.

Finally, here's the ultimate hip-hop expression of cultivation theory and "big media effects" concerns:



And here is a link to the lyrics.

Gerbner's Cultivation Theory

Here is the man himself, the myth, the legend, talking about his theory. This was produced in the mid 90s by the Media Education Foundation out of UMass Amherst. It's a trailer for a 1/2 hour educational video called "The Electronic Storyteller."



Most profound in the video for me is Gerbner's notion that we do not learn from specific acts or shows, but from recurring plots and characterizations--what he calls "casting" of social roles. Griffin focuses on the violence and mean world aspects of the theory, but this video also emphasizes race and gender roles as cultivated by TV.

Of course, this theory and its supporting research was developed through a time when home entertainment was dominated by the TV, and most people had 3-6 Broadcast stations to choose from. I wonder, do you think the Internet cultivates distorted perceptions of the real world? Is their a "mainstreaming" effect that happens with Internet users? Are their prominent portrayals of certain people in certain roles doing certain things that a majority of people on the web see over and over in different sites everyday? How could we study it?