Cultivation Theory Cultivation Effects Analysis

As Gerber asserts, cultivation theory helps explain the effects that violent television has on viewers. We can also find that sexuality on radio, television, and magazines has cultivation effects on society. Sex and violence is, after all, the one-two combo that dominates prime-time television. Therefore, if the latter can be shown to have cultivation effects on the viewing public, it stands to reason that the former will too. Common sense tells us as much after a mere cursory glance at our surroundings. The flood of sexuality in advertising, musical beats and lyrics, and on screen and in the printed media surely have an effect on the way societal attitudes interpret sex. In fact, plenty of evidence exists to support the notion that views toward homosexuality, for example, are changing in radical ways. In the decade that has passed since prime-time television began representing homosexual characters in a positive way, homosexuality in society has gained more and more recognition -- culminating for the moment with the legalization of gay marriage in New York. Researchers like Jerel Calzo, Jennifer Bonds-Raacke, and Werner-Wilson likewise agree: television and other media can change the way society regards both hetero- and homosexuality. This paper will hypothesize about some of the cultivation effects that may be seen from this perspective.

The most obvious place to state is with adolescents, whose views on sexuality are being tested because of their age. Caught in the very nets of the first flushes of sexuality, they are especially vulnerable to the images and subject matter of advertising and television programming. While their opinions about what is acceptable...

No matter how they are raised, the sexual temptations that are tossed around lightly in the media can prove to have a powerful cultivation effect on the young, who may find themselves more and more free to experiment with types of sexual behavior they heretofore did not even know of. The rationale for partaking in risky sexual behavior can be as simple as, "Well, it appears that everyone does it -- at least on TV." Werner-Wilson, for example, makes the claim that adolescents have an especially difficult time discerning reality from the unreality of prime-time television. The views that represented in televised programming serve to reinforce a worldview that can be harmful.
Other groups who seem to be affected are college-age men and women. Bonds-Raacke conducted an experiment in which she observed that women's ideas of sexuality are generally influenced by sexualized programming. In her test, women who watched programming that depicted unprotected sexual activity later admitted to engaging in the same kind of behavior. Those who watched programming that depicted safe sex later admitted to practicing safe sex. This is another cultivation effect: the sexual practices that television represents serve as a guide -- as Bonds-Raacke finds -- for women in college, who are themselves apparently more socially oriented when it comes to taking cues on sexual behavior.

A cultivation effect that Calzo observes is the way in which 25-35-year-old males respond to television programming that represents homosexuals in a positive light. While Calzo claims that the representations are not really…