Audience Theory - Cultivation Theory

The Cultivation Theory was developed by George Gerbner and is focuses on the long term effects of the consumption of media texts. The theory explains how audiences becomes desensitises by the repeated consumption of violence images in the media whether through TV, Film, Internet etc. There were many films that ere banned in the 70's due to MP's believing that these violent films would corrupt children and provoke them to part take in acts of violence such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Hill Have Eyes (1978). In the 70's these films plus many others were on a banned film list in a time called the 'Video Nasties'.

However the modern younger generation of kids are more exposed to violence images on the media platforms such as the internet and video games, many children are desensitised by these images due to heavy consumption of them.





Cultivation theory suggests that audiences get desensitised to violent images after repeated exposure to them. A good example of this is films that got banned on release such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Hills Have Eyes (1978), however now the younger generation would not see the problem with films such as these as they tend to watch more violent and horrific images that they have become desensitised.  It also states that heavy TV viewers are shaped by the media they watch. This can be applied to music videos in the context that viewers may get desensitised to images such as nudity and violence. For example, genres such as rap and hip hop have a high amount of gang culture in their music videos, which in theory could cause audiences to be desensitised to the idea of drugs, weapons and the gang culture.