George Gerbner was a media researcher who studied the effects of television violence for over 30 years. He founded the Cultural Indicators Project in 1968 to analyze television content and its effects on viewers' perceptions of the world. Gerbner developed cultivation theory, which proposes that heavy television viewers come to see the real world as similar to the fictional world portrayed on TV. The Cultural Indicators Project monitored television programming to measure the amount of violence and how it impacted viewers' beliefs about society.

1. THE “MAINSTREAMING” OF
AMERICA: VIOLENCE PROFILE
NO.11
~GEORGE GERBNER ET AL

2. GEORGE GERBNER
 He was born in Budapest in 1919, Mr.
Gerbner intended to study folklore at the
University of Budapest but was forced to flee
fascist Hungary in 1939.
 Mr. Gerbner worked as a professor and
researcher at the Institute for
Communications Research at the University
of Illinois from 1956 until 1964, when he
accepted a position at Penn. After leaving
Penn in 1990, he founded the Cultural
Environment Movement, an advocacy group
working for greater diversity in media.
 He was dean emeritus of the Annenberg
School for Communications at the University
of Pennsylvania and studied television for
more than three decades.

3. GEORGE GERBNER
 He founded the Cultural Indicators Research Project in
1968 to track changes in television content and how
those changes affect viewers' perceptions of the world.
Its database has information on more than 3,000
television programs and 35,000 characters.
 Mr. Gerbner also worked with Larry Gross, Michael
Morgan, and Nancy Signorielli. Gross and Signorielli
were both professors of communication.
 He coined the phrase "mean world syndrome," a
phenomenon in which people who watch large amounts
of television are more likely to believe that the world is
an unforgiving and frightening place.
 He focused on the effects of mass media on everyday
life.

4. THE TWO ARGUMENTS OF GERBNER AND HIS
ASSOCIATES :
 Traditional Media Effects researchers err by
focusing solely on the immediate “before and after”
effects of exposure to media messages on people’s
behavior and attitudes.
- symbolic environment
 Television provides a concentrated system of
storytelling that rivals religion un its power to shape
people’s social perceptions.

5. OVERVIEW: CULTURAL
INDICATORS PROJECT
 Is a “longitudinal” or long-term study of media
effects involving a three-pronged research effort:
- institutional analysis (structures of decision
making that are involved in the production of media
messages)
- message system analysis
- cultivation analysis

6. WHAT IS CULTIVATION THEORY?
 States that television brings about a shared way of
viewing the world.
 Hypothesizes that perceptions of the social world
on the part of heavy viewers will very closely
resemble the structure of the “world of TV” content.

7. CULTURAL INDICATORS PROJECT
(1968)
 Television makes specific and measurable
contributions to viewers’ conceptions of reality.
These contributions relate both to the synthetic
world television presents and to viewers’ real life
circumstances.
 In cultivation analysis, it is the periodic
examinations of television programming and
conceptions of social reality cultivated by viewing.
 The two interrelated parts of the Project are:
message system analysis and cultivation analysis

8. MESSAGE SYSTEM ANALYSIS
 It is the annual monitoring of samples of prime time
and weekend daytime network dramatic
programming (including series, other
plays, comedies, movies, and cartoons).
 It involves in-depth, quantitative content analysis
aimed at discovering basic, social building blocks of
TV content.

9. CULTIVATION ANALYSIS
 It is the investigation of viewer conceptions of social
reality associated with the most recurrent features
of the world of television.
 It focuses on TV viewers , correlating attitudes
about the social world with the amount of TV
viewing and content of TV.

10. VIOLENCE
 Violence is the overt expression of physical force with or
without a weapon, against self or others) compelling
action against one’s will on pain of being hurt or killed or
threatened to be so victimized as part of the plot.
 Violence Index is the annual content analysis of a
sample week of network television prime time fare
demonstrating how much violence is present

11. ICE-AGE ANALOGY
 In cultivation analysis, it is the idea that the size of
television’s influence is less critical than the
direction of its steady contribution.

12. VIOLENCE INDEX IN CHILDREN’S AND PRIME-
TIME PROGRAMMING, 1967-1979
700
600
500
400 8-9 p.m. EST
300
9-11 p.m. EST
200
weekend daytime
100 children's programs
0

13. SOURCES:
•http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/obituaries/03gerbner.html
• Hanson, Jarice and David J. Maxcy, eds. (1996). Sources:
Notable Selections in Mass Media. Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin
Publishing Group.
• Littlejohn, Stephen & Foss, K.A. (2007). Theories on Human
Communication. Cengage Learning.