The Cultivation Theory

The Cultivation Theory states that the more a person is exposed to the media portrayed in television, the greater its effect is on the person's judgement on the world, based on what they are exposed to. It affects the viewers in a passive rather than an active way, influencing the peoples' attitude to the world rather than their behaviour towards it. Gerbner and Gross - who coined the theory - suggest that television has the same power over society in the modern day as religion has had in earlier times.

One of the most common examples of the cultivation theory in practice is the urban belief that violence in youth that is shown on the news stems from violence shown on TV and video games. However, because the cultivation theory suggests that the effects of TV are more passive than active, it argues against this belief. Implying the cultivation theory into this belief would suggest that those affected by the exposure to media are not the violent individuals but those who support and believe it. This is because the portrayal of violence on TV involves a focus on youths and represents youths more commonly in a negative way rather than a positive one, and violence on TV itself has become more accepted by society over the years, as viewers become more immune to its primary purpose of shocking the audience. With the strong link between youth and violence in the media, people grow up accepting these stereotypes as fact, because that is what they are exposed to from the earliest stages of their life. This alters the views of of people towards youth in the real world, as it can cause people to judge and fear teenagers and youths in public in case they have an outburst of violence, as that is how the media has portrayed them.

The site citation.allacademic.com points out that 65% of video games feature violence as bloodless and and frequent, and in a way which disregards its long-term effects on others; thus normalising it amongst video game players. And though articles like this one argue against the popular belief on certain crimes committed by young people to be influenced by video games, statistics such as the former have been accepted by the public to be a factual correlation with crime, when it could mostly be coincidence. There are books written as early as 1999 (Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill by Lt. Col. David Grossman) which stirred controversy on the subject, and Grossman has defended his opinion by describing first-person shooter games as "murder simulators"- proving that this urban belief has already been around even in the early days of the timeline of video games. The article on the Sandy Hook shooting is as recent as 2013 and the proof in the long-term effects of the cultivation theory is evident in how the police had to make an official statement to the public to decline the statement that has been reinforced by a national outcry whose beliefs stem from the reinforced negative representation of young people.