Gerbur's Cultivation theory

George Gurbner's cultivation theory

• The media generally tends to repeat representations of people or groups of people over and over again.
• The effects of the media build up over time. 
• If you were to see a group of people being violent once you might ignore it and not believe it is the case in real life, but if you see this over and over again in TV, films, newspapers, eventually you as an audience may start to believe it is actually true. The effect of that representation is going to be bigger on you. You will start to except it as realistic and you are going to do that because it has been ingrained in your brain over days, months, years and seeing lots of the same thing.
• Gurbner believes that these repeated representations cultivate or grow are ideas and change perceptions over time and also what they do it create an idea in mainstream in what are dominant ideologies. 
• The cultivation of effects of the media can change the dominant ideologies of society.
• So if we start seeing more and more representations of people in the media in a positive way at for example, then over time bit by bit slowly but surely perhaps society's perceptions of a particular social group may become more postive and then that will become the dominant ideology in society.

Gerbner’s Theory	The Daily Mail	The Guardian
“Mean world syndrome”-a cynical, mistrusting attitude towards other people- caused by prolonged exposure to (violence) but in this case proper value.	Racism- A Polish butcher arrested on suspicion of the abduction of missing student Libby Squire has been charged with a string of offences unrelated to the 21-year-old's disappearance.   Violence-Pictured: Six-year-old boy who was dragged from a taxi and beheaded 'with a shard of glass' in front of his screaming mother in Saudi Arabia Homophobic- NHS told to give out £5,000-a-year lifestyle drug to prevent HIV – as vital cataract surgery Is rationedthe newspaper claimed the pills are a “lifestyle drug” that  represent a “skewed sense of values” and “encourage” risky sexual behaviour. The Mail claimed people would be denied cataract surgery due to the cost of the service, even though no cost-effectiveness assessment of the drug had been carried out. Classism-	The guardian says to be politely neutral but they are influencing you.
People are more likely to use labels/ stereotypes penned in the paper.		Against upper class
Audiences more likely to describe themselves as political movement.	Classism, racism, everything-What CAN I joke about? Comedian cancels university show after students force him to sign 'behaviour contract' banning sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, transphobia... plus SEVEN other ‘isms’- it supports the comedian.

Either

• Gerbner's cultivation theory

• Shirky's end of audience theory

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk

use usefullness all the time
argue both for and against

para1- violence and conent, what gives audiences negative views

para2- stereotyping are people more like to stereotype if they read the guardian or the Daily Mail

para 3- people are more likely to gurnner arges that newpapers are poltically nutraul but theyre not

4. Evaluate the usefulness of one of the following in understanding audiences for online newspapers such as The Guardian and The Daily Mail. 

Gerbner's cultivation theory states that if an audience has exposure to television over long periods of time they will acquire standardised roles and behaviors. For example, to develop 'mean world syndrome from prolonged exposure to high levels of television violence. Gerbner also found that heavy TV viewing led to mainstreaming, giving them opinions based on images and labels on TV. Even though the theory was written about television it can easily be applied to online news although there are limitations. Gerbner's theory can be applied to online newspapers and is useful in understanding their audiences, mostly to audiences within a 'digital bubble' who only consume messages from a narrow range of sources that target their demographic and physical and physiographic, such as news feeds on Facebook. However their are some limitations as Gerbner's theory was created for films, but I will explore it in terms of online newspapers

Gerbner's cultivation theory may apply to a wide range of media products including online newspapers. As the Daily Mail Online focuses on racism and violence. For example on 11/02/18, when a man had been charged with the suspicion of abduction of Libby Squire he was labelled as ‘Polish’ is a negative way which was completely unnecessary to state his race. This would support Gerbner's cultivation theory as the Daily Mail are focusing on ‘bad’ news which is creating the belief in the audience that the world is a dangerous place characterized by these negative events. This supports arguments of those who think online newspapers should be regulated to avoid public harm and adds to the idea that reading these newspapers it can increase violence. Since Brexit there has been an increase in negative hate crime. 

Those who argue that online newspapers should be regulated to avoid public harm could be wrong. As a form of intertextuality researchers at the University of York have found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent. This research could be applied to online newspapers since we may be reading violence and racism may not actually change are opinions and views, we may read newspapers as a source of entertainment but it may not affect us in our day to day lives and opinions. On the other hand there are those who argue that people are not influenced about what they read and say as the majority of people have not gone out and acted upon the negative stories. 

The Guardian have always claimed to be politically neutral and at first glance at their online newspaper you would agree with this, however looking closely at news articles views and opinions are embedded into them making inflicting their views on their labor audience. Gerbner's theory states that audiences are more likely to use labels and stereotypes penned in the paper. This could be said for The Guardian as a recent story has reported on ‘English councils accused of hiding scale of homelessness crisis’. Although this could be seen to be helping homeless people it can also connote that councils are made up of very bad people that are trying to rule out homelessness and let it go under the radar, supporting Gerbner's theory. In other words the negative stories are creating a national divide in opinions. This is making others act out and argue online about these topics. 

To conclude I agree with Gerbner's theory that the media creates cynical world syndrom, that Newspapers draw attention on bad news giving their strong opinions which are inflicted on the consumers. Since the media owners are in control of what gets put into newspapers they can control consumers and make them see things in any way they like, and this can influence peoples opinions and the way they act out to others, which might be in a violent way.