Diversifying Mass Communications

Cultivation scholars engaged with critical theory and new forms of political criticism in the ‘post-Annenberg’ era. Nancy Signorielli nurtured a network of feminist scholars and maintained the cultural indicators project, paying particular attention to gender equality. Michael Morgan, widely credited with sharpening the mainstreaming concept, collaborated with critical qualitative scholars to make arguments about the dangers of US global media hegemony that Annenberg had discouraged. Signorielli and Morgan inspired Erica Scharrer, to carry cultural indicators and cultivation theory into the digital age. Scharrer has demonstrated how both models can be used to organise committed yet transparent analysis of how contemporary genres such as pornography and reality TV affect gender equality. Thus, cultivation theory and cultural indicators approaches exemplify how politically inspired research questions can be explored responsibly.