Who We Are
Hello! My name is Lígia Lopes and I belong in Class 1 of Languages and Foreign Cultures which is what I am studying at my university.
I am a really positive person who tries her best not to spread sadness or any negative feeling to others and so, I will always be a person who tries to cheer others up. What I find most pleasing to do in my free time is listen to music, play guitar, watch a LOT of series and learn Korean.
My dream for the future is to become a translator and for such, learning diverse languages is something I do for fun and something that I am looking forward to keep doing with other languages other than Korean, Spanish, French and English.
Hi. My name is Rafael António da Silva Costa, and I’m one of the members of this group. I see myself as a calm person. I don’t like conflicts and I’d rather be among people who are also chilled and calm than with conflictuous individuals. Music is my refuge, and I’m NEVER away from my earphones.
Besides that, I love playing sports (any but handball), watching sports and commenting about them. To conclude this brief presentation of myself, I’m very ambicious about my academic path, and I’m never satisfied with myself.
I’m realistic, but I persue the best I know I can get from my intelligence and my shrewdness.
Hi. My name is Vitor Diogo Soares Duarte, I'm in class 1 of Languages and Foreign Cultures and one of the members of this group. I would say that i'm very persistent, logical and open minded person. My favourite things to do in my free time are: be with my friends, listen to music, play video games (with my friends) and watch tv shows and movies. My dream for the future is to work in as many areas of what this course allows, and I'm looking forward to it.
Hi, my name is Vânia Pereira and I'm 18 years old. I am a very outgoing and friendly girl. I love to support my football team which is FC Porto with my dad, and dance and voleyball are my passion since I was a little girl. I have hopes and dreams to have a job in a hotel or a cruise.
What We Think
Index of Questions:
What could be a good definition for Cultivation Theory? Why the name "Cultivation"?
Cultivation Theory is a mass communication theory used to explain the way that the television shapes concepts of social reality. According to this theory, people who watch television frequently are more likely to be influenced by the messages from the world of television. This influence can even change their world view and their perceptions, which start reflecting what they repeatedly see and hear on television. Therefore, television is considered to the people’s perception of social reality. According to the Cultivation Theory, because television content is mass produced and occupies a central role in most of cultures around the world, it is more influential than other forms or mass media. Furthermore, the television cultivates values and attitudes already present in the culture. It serves to reinforce the status quo, not to challenge it. Why is it called Cultivation, you may ask? The answer is quite simple if you think about it for a while. Nowadays, people pay attention to the media in their everyday life. Whether they are watching television while they’re having dinner, listening to the radio on their way to work, or reading the newspaper in the coffee shop, they are constantly being “bombarded” with information, and whether they realize or not, they are, in a way, being manipulated by this media, especially the television. One crystal clear example of this is the television violence, which is believed to influence the public’s conceptions of violence in their lives and in society, making them more fearful, making them believe that the world is more violent and brutal than it really is. Television is CULTIVATING thoughts into people’s minds, cultivating what they want people to think and percept. This idea is like a cultivation. The media are the cultivators, the people are the soil, and the result of this “manipulation” are the seeds which grow more and more, day after day.
Rafael Costa
Why is the Cultivation Theory criticized by some theorists?
A number of scholars have critiqued Gerbner's assertions on cultivation theory, particularly its intentions and its scope. One critique of the theory analyzes the objective of the theory.Professor Jennings Bryant posits that cultivation research focuses more on the effects rather than who or what is being influenced. Bryant goes on to assert that the research to date has more to do with the "whys" and "hows" of a theory as opposed to gathering normative data as to the "whats", "whos", and "wheres". Another critique comes from Daniel Chandler: "those who live in high-crime areas are more likely to stay at home and watch television and also to believe that they have a greater chance of being attacked than are those in low-crime areas." He claims as well, "when the viewer has some direct lived experience of the subject matter this may tend to reduce any cultivation effect." While television does have some effect on how we perceive the world around us, Gerbner's study does not consider the lived experiences of those that do inhabit high crime areas.
Cultivation analysis has also been criticized by humanists for examining such a large cultural question. Because the theory discusses cultural effects, many humanists feel offended, thinking that their field has been misinterpreted. Horace Newcomb (1978) writes "More than any other research effort in the area of television studies the work of Gerbner and Gross and their associates sits squarely at the juncture of the social sciences and the humanities."
The theory has also received criticism for ignoring other issues such as the perceived realism of the televised content, which could be essential in explaining people's understanding of reality. Wilson, Martins, & Markse (2005) argue that attention to television might be more important to cultivating perceptions than only the amount of television viewing.
Vânia Pereira
Audiences are able to choose whether or not they want to be influenced by the content they watch. Truth or Lie?
This question may raise different opinions according to the level of knowledge about media but either way, no one likes to confess that they let themselves be influenced by media, correct? But the hard truth is that we the viewers, whether is on TV, on a newspaper, radio or any other medium, don't get to have control over these techniques that, even though we may not feel them, are influencing our thoughts and our ways of seeing things. Now, there are different theories that try to prove this impact of media in the audience, for example that people usually like to read or listen things that backup their own opinions, or other that suggests that the mass media is so powerful that it injects thoughts, values and beliefs in the audience and might even change their personal opinions, and other that the audience can gain identity through what we watch. Of course that all these theories vary and we get to believe in which one we want but the truth is that mass media is indeed very powerful, and they definitely have ways of manipulating the audience to think that they are choosing things for themselves by watching TV but what they are doing is just misleading you into thinking that. Media are somehow very dangerous too and but what is still ours to control is how much TV or newspapers or magazines we watch and read so if you can control that then it is already a good thing to do.
Lígia Lopes
Does the media control the audience or do they just give them what they want?
In the world as we know it mass media is everywhere, television, internet, radio, newspapers and the population is bombarded everyday with new information from all the parts. Can this mass broadcasting potentialize mass persuasion, controlling the audiences?
In the Cultivation theory is studied the theory that people that watch more television and other forms of media are more susceptible to change their view of the world and start to be manipulated into thinking the way the media wants them to think.
We can sure agree that media is a strong manipulation mechanism, just looking Germany during World War 2, everything in Germany, films, newspapers, posters, radio broadcasts books, all this media manipulated to make Germans believe and follow Hitler’s ideas of anti-Semitism.
We can also see this in today’s society, for example the United States in the context of the Iraq war everything in the media was to manipulate Americans into thinking the war was justified and even more recent with the elections of the United States, all media forms in Europe were promoting the vilification of Donald Trump only talking about bad things that he had done and making Hillary the heroic candidate, everyone believed that Donald Trump had no chance to win the elections but what happened was that Donald Trump won.
We can assume that we are being manipulated everyday by the media forms but in a way that we don’t even understand, information left behind fake news and story’s all the bias information that’s on television, private television channels bias to the influence of the company that owns the channels, public channels influenced by politician’s. More than ever we must be aware of the information that we consume and always look for all the sides of the story to make up our mind.
Vitor Duarte
What is the “Cultivation Differential”?
The “cultivation differential” is the final part of the process of the cultivation process within this theory. According to the theorists, the degree of cultivation is not equal to all viewers, there being two types of viewers: heavy viewers and light viewers. While heavy viewers may perceive a certain television show with more aggressiveness, light viewers may perceive people to be more helpful and friendly. Despite this, there are several factors that can influence this degree of cultivation, such as the amount of television watched by the viewer, logically heavy viewers watch more than light viewers; the environment in which the viewer lives in, as a viewer living in a danger neighbourhood can perceive certain attitudes with more ferociousness; the gender, whereas women are constantly portrayed as victims on TV, and that may cause them to be more likely to experience Mean World Syndrome; the amount of people watching TV with the viewer, because viewing television with people cause them to discuss the themes they’re watching, reducing the chance of cultivation, while watching alone increases them; the familiarity they have with the situation portrayed in what they’re watching, since people that are watching something they lack knowledge of are more probable to be influenced by that, because they depend on the television to inform them; and even the age, as younger children who cannot comprehend motives or consequences as shown on TV are less likely to experience cultivation.
Rafael Costa
Does the media affect your view of social reality ?
As we studied Cultivation Theory examines the effect of long term exposure to television. The premise is that the more time people spend watching television the more likely they are to believe in the social reality portrayed on television. But is there some true to this premise or this somewhat wrong?
In my opinion we can agree with the premise of the Cultivation Theory, for example if you ask a child what she/he thinks about what the world Is and what is the bad things about the world they probably won’t even know anything bad, because they are shielded from what the media passes on the news. But if we ask an adult(an old person in their 60’s that pass a lot of time watching television) the response we will get will be absolutely different from what we will get from other person, they will probably say the world is a violent, corrupted and unsafe place based on the news on television. Nowadays it appears that every news channels only pass news about violence and crimes on television and it helps people change their view of the world. But if we look at facts and numbers we see that the world isn’t such a bad place, in North America and Europe for example the criminality rates are really low but I can’t say the same about the corrupted part, maybe the world is really corrupted.
To conclude, we can agree that what passes on the media can affect your view of the world but if you look at other places not only television we can demystify this and look for good things instead of all the bad things that are fed to us.
Vitor Duarte
In what ways is Television still more relevant than Internet nowadays?
It is safe to say that no media nowadays has the level of importance as high as internet. Internet is the present and the future and nowadays, anything, literally anything, can be found online whether it is news, music, series, films, recipes, games, photos, documentaries, books, check out what your friends have been doing with their lifes,... anything. Yet, as for some Internet is the most useful tool, for others it might be a big obstacle. Older generations are the perfect example of that. But television is still one of the biggest media that exists and that is not just because of the older generations who are unfamiliar with working with internet, but also because even though internet is the biggest resource we have, is it a resource that is shared worldwide and so not everything we see is believable and true. We cannot think that all we search and find online is written in stone. That's why we still use television a lot. News on television, for example, will provide us with correct information and facts in which we can actually trust. Besides, there are quite a few TV shows, nowadays not so much though, that you can only see on TV and can't find online. Television is also of great use when you feel lazy and you just want to Zap through channels and see random programs airing at that moment. The point is, Internet will always be the biggest and most powerful medium at least until something better is created but we must not disregard the still great power of television on its viewers and the effects it may have on them as well.
Lígia Lopes
What is the Mean World Sindrome?
Vânia Pereira
Mean World Syndrome is a phenomenon where the violence-related content of mass media convinces viewers that the world is more dangerous than it actually is, and prompts a desire for more protection than is warranted by any actual threat. Mean World Syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory. The term "Mean World Syndrome" was coined by George Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on the effects of television on society, when he noted that people who watched a lot of TV tended to think of the world as an unforgiving and scary place. The number of opinions, images, and attitudes that viewers tend to make when watching television will have a direct influence on how the viewer perceives the real world. They will reflect and refer to the most common images or recurrent messages thought to impact on their own real life. Gerbner once said "You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behaviour," he said. "It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it's a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.
Individuals who watch television infrequently and adolescents who talk to their parents about reality are said to have a more accurate view of the real world than those who do not, and they are able to more accurately assess their vulnerability to violence and tend to have a wider variety of beliefs and attitudes.
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