Cultivation and Agenda Setting
Two influential theories of long-term media effects: that heavy media exposure shapes perceptions of reality, and that media shape which issues the public deems important.
Definition
Cultivation theory holds that long-term media exposure cultivates audiences' conceptions of social reality; agenda-setting theory holds that media influence which issues audiences regard as important, even if not what they think about them.
Scope
This topic examines cultivation theory and agenda-setting theory, both of which posit cumulative rather than immediate effects. It covers Gerbner's cultivation analysis of television's role in shaping worldviews, the agenda-setting tradition of McCombs and Shaw, related concepts of priming and framing, and the empirical evidence and debates surrounding these theories.
Core questions
- How does sustained media exposure shape perceptions of reality?
- Do media tell audiences what to think about rather than what to think?
- How do priming and framing extend agenda-setting?
- What evidence supports cultivation and agenda-setting effects?
Key concepts
- Cultivation
- Mean world syndrome
- Agenda setting
- Priming
- Framing
- Salience
Key theories
- Cultivation theory
- Gerbner and Gross's theory that heavy television viewing cultivates a view of the world aligned with television's recurrent patterns, such as the 'mean world' effect.
- Agenda-setting theory
- McCombs and Shaw's finding that the issues emphasized by news media become the issues the public considers most important.
- Priming and framing
- Iyengar and Kinder's demonstration that television news primes the standards by which audiences evaluate political leaders and frames how issues are understood.
History
In the 1970s, Gerbner's cultivation analysis and McCombs and Shaw's agenda-setting study shifted attention from short-term persuasion to cumulative, long-term media effects. Subsequent work, including Iyengar and Kinder's experiments and McCombs's syntheses, refined these theories and connected them to priming and framing, making them mainstays of effects research.
Debates
- Strength and causality of long-term effects
- Whether observed correlations between media exposure and perceptions reflect genuine cultivation and agenda-setting effects or are confounded by selection and other factors.
Key figures
- George Gerbner
- Maxwell McCombs
- Donald Shaw
- Shanto Iyengar
Related topics
Seminal works
- gerbner1976
- mccombsshaw1972
- iyengarkinder1987
- mccombs2004
Frequently asked questions
- What is the 'mean world syndrome'?
- Gerbner's finding that heavy television viewers, exposed to frequent violence, tend to perceive the world as more dangerous than it actually is.
- What is the core claim of agenda-setting?
- That the media may not tell people what to think, but are strikingly successful in telling them what to think about, by emphasizing certain issues.