This week in Media and Society one of the concepts covers was Cultivation Analysis. According to Stanley J. Baran cultivation analysis is when "television cultivates or constructs a reality of the world that, although possibly inaccurate, becomes accepted simply because we are as a culture believe it to be true."It is amusing that people would actually live their life through television. But those people are out there like octomom Nadya Suleman who undergone various plastic surgical treatments to emanate Angelina Jolie. She is only famous for having a lot of kids and now doing anything she can to be in the spotlight including being in the adult industry.
According to George Gerber if you watch more than four hours of television today you see the world as a mean terrible place, but not immediately. What you see on television or do in a video game you will act out. But is this really the case? Diablo 3 is Blizzard's best selling game of this year (but you can't forget World of Warcraft with 10.7 million subscribers) with 6.5 million sold so far. In 2000 Diablo 2 sold over 4 million copies. Every few months a violent video game comes out but what sort of effect do you really think they have on society?
According to the FBI in 2010 about 1.2 million "violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 6.0 percent from the 2009 estimate." In the 2010 Preliminary Annual crime report violent crime went down 4% from the following year.
I think parts of this concept from the 60s is stil valid. People aren't slaves to television or video games but make it apart of their everyday lives. They discuss plots or actions with friends, buy merchandise and dress up as the characters for Halloween.
References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9DsOA1Y-w
Introduction to Mass Communication
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_Blizzard_games
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=audienceresec
I don’t feel that television emulates life, or people act out exactly what they see. With the age of reality television people don’t care about what people are doing but that they are famous. They see everyday people have camera crews following them, and they want a piece of that. Everyone wants fame.
ReplyDeleteIn the music industry I think people buy music because they like the artist by either the way they perform or their persona. Pop artists have always done things to stay in the public eye and in turn influence fashion. It is like the theory of rock n’ roll. If the girls want to do you, they guys want to be you, and everyone is buying your music.