The beliefs of television viewers become synonymous with the curated, repetitive themes portrayed on television. This is bound to cultivate a worldview that is shaped by the television.
-Ivana V
India had witnessed quite a few deaths of children in 2004, who died trying to
imitate superhero stunts from a popular television show Shaktimaan. Aaftab
Poonawala who very cruelly murdered his girlfriend Shraddha Walker in 2022 and
chopped her corpse into several pieces, revealed on investigation that he was
inspired by an American Crime Web Series. A number of other incidents show how
media has had an impact on the perceptions and subsequent actions of individuals.
What remains a question is whether the repeated exposure to media violence causes
individuals to act in ways they otherwise wouldn't.
George Gerbner proposed the cultivation theory according to which people who
watch television frequently are more likely to be influenced by the messages from
the world of television. Their worldview and perceptions are altered to the extent
that they reflect messages repeatedly seen on television. This exposure and
influence by media cultivate a shared worldview among viewers which in time,
becomes the dominant narrative. The surveys conducted
by Gerbner revealed a
small but statistically significant relationship between television consumption and
fear of being a victim of
a crime. It was found that heavy viewers overestimated
crime rates as well as their risk of being victims of crime and often underestimated
the safety of their neighbourhoods. The beliefs of television viewers become
synonymous with the curated, repetitive themes portrayed on television. This is
bound to cultivate a worldview that is shaped by the television.
With expansion in technology, research on cultivation has also broadened with
other forms of media like apps, social media, video games being included in addition
to television. We
are exposed to a wider range of media today. There are concerns
on how biased, misleading information online shape our perceptions. Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter & YouTube are the leading social media platforms that
tend to create a synthetic reality where people believe everything they see online.
Cultivation theory provides a skeleton structure that can define how exposure to
different forms of media can influence our perceptions and behaviour in turn.
Research carried out by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Leonard Eron, and
others starting in the 1980s found that children who were exposed to longer hours
of media violence in elementary school tended to show relatively higher levels of
aggression when they became teenagers. Later research by psychologists Douglas
Gentile and Brad Bushman however, suggested that exposure to media violence is
simply one of the multiple factors that contribute to aggressive behaviour. While
several other studies have found a correlation between exposure to media violence
and aggressive behaviour, this does not necessarily imply causation. Exposure to
media violence can be best perceived as one of the many factors that contribute to
the risk of violence and aggressive behaviour in individuals.
The Netflix show You has found ground- breaking success and by appealing to
people all over the world. According to Netflix, the show follows a ‘dangerously
charming, intensely obsessive young man’ who ‘goes to extreme measures to insert
himself into the lives of those he is transfixed by.’ This show is critiqued for the sex
appeal that it gives to the protagonist-a criminal because it can create unhealthy
fantasies in viewers that can go from gaslighting and stalking to murder. Dahmer –
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story also a show on Netflix received backlash for
hurting the sentiments of several
of the victims’ families by re-traumatising them
and treating the serial killer as a pop icon. The show had created a wave of thirst for
Dahmer with people creating fan blogs, cosplaying him on social media and
manufacturing merchandise. The adaptations of the stories of serial killers or this
genre in general, was seen to do more harm than good when Hollywood heartthrobs
play monsters thereby overly romanticising them.
In conclusion, while binge-watching crime shows can shape attitudes towards
violence
and aggression and also create an acceptance
of aggressive behaviour,
not all viewers are equally affected by what they watch at all times. Research has
shown that the effect of exposure to media violence especially in children is
moderated by their situation during presentation or that period, as well as their
individual predispositions.
∎
