'Gerbner' by Mark Dixon

key notes

1. fear cultivation 

•  media products can guide an audiences attitude, before mass media the churchand education systems applied the same techniques 
• television can influence everyone, especially due to the growing scale of people who have access to a televsion 
• he proves this point because you dont have to be literate to understand the easily accesible content, especially as its consumed by everyone, due to relativey low or no cost.
• television is predominantly produced by a few media makers, which leads to dominnat messages however this could be changing in recent times
• media products are encoded with realism, which makes it harder to seprate them from reality

     2. The violence index 

• the impapct and scale of violence depicted in film could be having an effect on the collective conciousness of society
• some of Gerbners findings incuded:

           - 8/10 programmes contained some kind of violence

           - 9/10 kids shows had violent content  

           - 8-16 episodes contained violence per hour 

           - females are normally depicted more vunerbale than men (1.32 females victims for each episode               of violence, compared to 1.19 males)

           - elderly,single and non white white females are prone to victimisation. The victimisation of this               category is common in drama programmes. while white males are least victimised.

• within the news industry theres a focus on violence becuase thats what attracts an audience 
• the more negative and vioent media consumed the more likey we are to believe that the world is this way 

     3. Cultivating fear and danger

•   Cultural indicators project designed to pressure television networks to remove violent content
• audiences exposed to more violence had a heightened perception of real world violence 
• it also found that higher viewing makes peope feel less trusting in others and fearful of the real world and the crimes
• Resonance: high crime areas=heavy tv viewers, subject to double the effects 
• Mainstreaming: heavy viewers that where less informed on crime, face more perception of violence, these kind of tv shows can change peoples perspecitves 
• heavy mass media consumption can make people more susceptible to messages in media products
• this is called 'Mean World Syndrome'

      3. violence on television represents symbolic power

• television creates winners and losers, social groups have hierarchy
• key groups of victims often have ideologically inferior status in the real word 
• dominance of white males as heroic law makers/enforcers, puts them in a social superior positon
• narratives such as bad people being stopped by the laaw and everyone having a happy ending as a result shows the messag of good will always win
• media justifies targetting key groups to violence
• audiences rely on authority for protection as they are to afraid to stand against percieved injustice 

      4.constructing content for the mainstream

• against media reliance on advertising revenue 
• media frames events so that it appears neutral

      5.cultivation theory (Magazines + internet)

• Gerbners interest stemmed from the expansion of tv ownership post war
• encuturalisation (a process that forms a persons identity) is caused by tv