Cultivation Theory and the Digital Age

This chapter explains cultivation theory, the cultural indicators project and why these research models remain popular and controversial. Cultivation theoryCultivation theory was a novel argument about the cultural impact of screen violence, whose lessons provide handy explanations for the provenance and significance of hostile mediated politics.Cultivation theorydefinition of Yet critics argue that cultivation theory owes much of its success to power dynamics in mass comm practice that privileged certain voices, as scholars set about analysing the social impact of post-war TV. In either case, a history of cultivation theory and its ‘parent’—the cultural indicators project—allows us to understand how history, politics and people all played significant roles in the development and impact of social science research approaches to media influence studies.