In the post before me, Jim quotes Gerbner who says “most people who decry violence on television are worried that all too-receptive young viewers will imitate aggression on the screen.” In 1956, Alberta Siegel conducts an experiment on twenty four children in nursery school. Half of the children watch a violent episode of Woody Woodpecker and the other half watch a non-violent Little Red Hen cartoon. The outcome was the children who watched the violent cartoon were more aggressive and isolated. I believe all types of media have a huge effect on how we act and view others. Gerbner says the idea of the “chances of involvement with violence, fear of walking alone at night, perceived activity of police, and general mistrust of people increase in relationship to how much television one watches. I believe this to be completely true while others disagree. For example, when I watch a good ghost movie my mind is more open to the fact that a ghost may be in my room when I go to sleep because my mind has been flooded with realistic images of ghosts that evening. Any other day I absolutely do not believe in ghosts and the thought that my house may be haunted is ridiculous. So my question is, if I watch ghost documentaries all the time, read true ghost sighting stories all the time, constantly bombard myself with ghost images will that change how I think about ghosts. That is why I believe continually saturating oneself with media will cause you to change how you think about violence, sex, or just walking alone at night. I also think the idea of Cultivation Theory also applies to real life and what you are surrounded by, product of your environment. What’s the difference between seeing violence on television constantly or seeing it in real life? I wanted to show you the Alberta Siegel experiment as my media but I could not find it so I choose to do this. Watch the clips below. See if you aren’t a little scared. Just a fun experiment!! See if you can relate these videos to Cultivation theory and how the emotions of being scared and aggressiveness (violent) are provoked the same way through video.

Ghost Crying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW-oQ7HAB5U&feature=related

Girl In Car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnH9OJP6FTk

Cultivation Theory of George Gerbner

Gerbner wrote that violence “is the simplest and cheapest dramatic means to demonstrate who wins in the game of life and the rules by which the game is played. Gerbner took a survey using two groups, the light and heavy viewers and asked them about each category Chances of involvement with violence, Fear of walking alone at night, Perceived activity of police, and the general mistrust of people. What he got was the heavy viewers believing that they are more likely to be a victim of violence; they fear that 1 in 10 of them will be of risk of violence on any given day. Light viewers believed that in was more like 1 in 100.

Cultivation Research has three steps to it: The first step in cultivation research is content analysis: The process of studying the subject matter on TV. For example, in 1969, Gerbner and his colleagues "began to chart the content of prime-time and weekend children's television programming

The second step in cultivation research is the cultural indicators analysis: the process of assessing individuals' beliefs about what the world is like. This analysis involves surveys of individuals using factual questions about the world.

The final step in cultivation research is cultivation analysis: "a comparison between light television viewers and heavy television viewers. If heavy television viewers tended to provide answers that were more in line with the television response, researchers would have support for the cultivation hypothesis"

Below is a link to a clip from the final season of the Sopranos. The clip shows the death of a rival gangster and oh man it is quite violent. That is what makes it such a good scene though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDI0NDAjbI&feature=related

I watch a lot of TV every week shows like: 24, Prison Break, Heroes, and Law and Order just to name a few. I get my fill of violence for the week. Violence is a big reason I watch certain shows on TV it draws people to it, by the time the typical TV viewer graduates from High School, he or she has observed thirteen thousand violent deaths. That number sounds about right to me; since I’ve graduated High School I’d estimate I have seen about four thousand more deaths. Griffin says “most people who decry violence on television are worried that all too-receptive young viewers will imitate aggression on the screen. I believe this statement to be true. I remember when I was a young a teenager I watched wrestling a lot and I try to imitate what I saw on television, not knowing the dangers and the risk involved with doing so. Crime is 10 times as rampant in the "television world" as it is in the real world. Viewing these violent programs does have a great affect on people. I remember a murder when I lived in Pittsburgh, about two teenagers who killed one of their mothers, and cut off her hands and feet and her head, because they saw it on the Sopranos. The Sopranos is an ultra violent TV show, that aired on HBO for six seasons and it was one of the highest rated and most loved shows of all time, because of its ties to real life and the violence that accompanied the show.