Blog Prompt #2

The concept of the Cultivation Theory helps me begin to comprehend the impacts of the extreme images of violence, sex, and other disturbing, or not 'every-day' acts performed on television, internet, radio, and other media sources everyday and the effect it has on the mass-media viewer.


Ultimately, the Cultivation Theory says that the form of media a viewer is receiving is blending in with actual reality of the viewer, so in a sense, real life is mixing in with what the viewer is retaining from the form of media, whether it be radio, television, or the internet, that they're using. Also, it is made apparent that the 'occasional' media viewer is not as likely as a heavy media viewer to lose sense of the distinct line between reality and the fiction of television shows or fictitious writing meant to entertain and not inform a reader/viewer. The influence of media can reach to the audience in many ways, which is how people today spend hours upon hours with the media rather than in their own lives, which then leads to the melding of real life and fiction for those mass media viewers. 


An example of this phenomenon would be the missing children ads seen in newspapers and stores, the abductions that are seen on television shows, and the ads that run on the internet and radio about missing children. When heavy mass-media viewers, especially children in this case, see these abductions and see these missing ads, the effect is intensified and their reality begins to distort into that land of fiction where they believe that at any moment, they are likely to be kidnapped themselves. To further prove my example, it becomes all too real for these viewers when there is an actual kidnapping in their own neighborhood. It hits too close to home and begins that transition of fiction to reality. In addition to children, I personally have many friends that watch the prime-time crime television series and still get scared that they're the next target for a local serial killer or abductor and they're in their twenties! In a way, the cultivation of all their time spent watching television, listening to the radio, surfing the internet, and reading the news has lead to an intense fear of the media they love to watch, hear or read mixing into their own reality. That is what the cultivation theory is; when the viewers' perception of reality becomes too much like what they see in the media.

Adds like this can be the beginning of the blending of reality and fiction for those heavy media viewers.

Shows like these can seem all too real for any age.