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How to Use Cultivation Theory to Defend Violent Video Games

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by Ali Rapp on December 23, 2012 at 01:26 PM
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Now that it's enjoyed the spotlight on my personal blog for a few days, I'd like to share with you all a piece I wrote on cultivation theory, a theory of communication studies, and how to use it to defend violent video games. I wrote it before the NRA's ridiculous press conference partially blaming games for gun violence in the United States, though you can easily see where their argument would fit into my piece.

-Cross-posted from No, I Am a Dog-

I’m not going to lie: I didn’t know the name of the Newtown killer before doing research for this piece. He was a very sick person and a murderer – that’s all I needed to know. I avoided clicking hyperlinks posted by Twitter friends because I didn’t want to be surprised by horribly sad pictures of dead kids, and more than anything, I didn’t want to feed the media frenzy that keeps Newtown residents from going out for groceries in fear they’ll be harassed by interviewers.

But then I started seeing the same old argument about the effects of violent media being thrown around by grown, “educated” people who should definitely know better, and I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer, because I had something I finally needed to say. National outlets like The Washington Post pretended to approach the issue of Lanza’s mental (in)stability objectively while at the same time offering up platforms to people with bunk ideas about how media can and cannot affect an individual’s behaviors. In a December 16th article, they quoted a forensic psychiatrist who believes first-person shooters encourage players to “dehumanize” others and “unreservedly” considers violent video games a cause of real violent behaviors. ABC News recently ran an article titled, “Do Video Games Make Kids Violent?” It doesn’t matter that the article was actually relatively fair – the headline sets the “agenda,” as we like to say in communication studies, and the agenda is, “violent games are something we need to worry about.” The Atlantic published an article written by a parent now paranoid about giving her sons Halo 4 for Christmas. Fox News reported that the NRA is currently planning to attempt to shift the debate from gun control to how video games “teach young kids how to shoot heads.”


As a media studies scholar who researches deviant media like pornography (and yes, even hyper-violent video games), I’ve heard all these arguments and issues with media, and more – many times, from much more educated folks who hold doctorates and are responsible for curating future generations of critical thinkers – and I’ve had just about enough of it. Clearly, the people who write and administer national news outlets never paid attention during their college courses about media effects and persuasion. If you agree with me (and if you don’t now, I think you might by the end of this piece), then read on to learn how to defend against the pithy, uneducated, distracting arguments claiming violent media cause violent actions.

One of my favorite communication studies theories is called the “cultivation theory.” It began as a large-scale research project in the late 1970s, and a scholar by the name of George Gerbner is usually credited with its long-term development. The theory continues to be one of the most frequently cited and most popular theories in communication studies, media studies, cultural studies, and mass communication studies, and thus, it’s been both refuted and refined since its original conception. However, at its core, cultivation theory basically states these three things that are highly applicable to discussions about media effects:

One, media does not influence people’s actions. Instead, media tends to influence people’s beliefs about reality. For example, people do not watch shows like Jersey Shore and The O.C. and then go out and have a ton of unprotected sex and act like idiots. People watch shows like Jersey Shore and The O.C. and then go out into the world believing that there are exponentially more people like Snooki in the world than there actually are. Teenagers who watch a lot of reality shows or pretty rich kid dramas tend to believe that most of their peers lost their virginity at an early age, that most people their age are rich, and that to be beautiful, one must be flawless, and usually white.

Two, the less people consume of a certain type of media, the less their conceptions of reality are affected by it. That is, people who watch one hour of Unsolved Mysteries every week are much less likely to believe that kidnappings happen by the second than do people who watch several hours of mystery-drama television daily.

Three, media does affect people, but its most dangerous effects are on a cultural level. Watching Leave it to Beaver probably didn’t convince many women to quit their jobs to lead lives as devoted housewives, but it did encourage the belief that there is an ideal U.S. American household (married parents, two kids, white picket fence).

Cultivation theory works just as well when discussing the effects of violent media, especially video games, on individuals. Actually, the theory was originally developed to speak solely to violent media effects. Here’s how:

One, violent video games do not make people more violent. This is why 99.9% of little boys and girls who grow up playing things like GoldenEye (like I did) or Doom never commit egregious acts of aggression. Violent video games can encourage those little girls and boys to believe that the world is an inherently violent place, and that they are at-risk for becoming victims, but violent video games cannot, in most circumstances, convince people to actually commit acts of violence themselves.

Two, the more violent video games people play, the more they will believe that the world is a violent place. These are the types of people who stereotype all Black Americans as dangerous because the majority of the mugshots their local news station publishes are of ethnic minorities. There isn’t some magical threshold that, once crossed, turns people into killers – they simply become more paranoid.

Three, the real danger in violent video games that dehumanize victims and encourage killing sprees isn’t seen in the ways they affect individuals – it’s in the ways they affect a culture’s relationship to violence and masculinity. The U.S. is notoriously obsessed with war-mongering, gun rights, and rigid gender roles that force people of all gender identities to act aggressively in order to gain power. It’s only when a culture, like the U.S., doesn’t critically analyze how those unfavorable realities are manifested and reinforced through media saturation of those types of messages (war coverage, unnecessarily gendered advertising, incessant coverage of tragedies, excessive profiling of killers) that the really dangerous stuff like mass murders are legitimized and encouraged.

I’m sick and tired of hearing all this “science” reporting by national news outlets and politicians. Cultivation theory is one of the hallmark theories of communication studies – the primary field responsible for critical analysis of media, media effects, and audience studies. There are many other communication theories that deal appropriately and fairly with media effects, and I encourage you to do your own research as desired. In the meantime, be a voice of educated reason in a sea of mindless bodies who would rather repeat untenable nonsense “science” than critically analyze the real issues affecting and affected by U.S. obsessions with violence, masculinity, and aggression.

Additional reading
Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1980). “The “Mainstreaming” of America: Violence Profile No. 11″, Journal of Communication, 30:3, 10-29.
Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Jackson-Beeck, M., Jeffries-Fox, S. & Signorielli, N. (1978). “Cultural indicators violence profile no. 9″. Journal of Communication, 28(3), 176-207.
Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1986). “Living with television: The dynamics of the cultivation process” in J. Bryant & D. Zillman (Eds.), Perspectives on media effects (pp. 17–40). Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gerbner, G. (1998). “Cultivation analysis: An overview”. Mass Communication and Society, 3/4, 175-194.
Griffin, E. (2012). Communication Communication Communication. McGraw-Hill: New York, (8), 366-377.

Ali is a former Game Informer editorial intern and is currently a master's student at the University of Minnesota, where she studies games, virtual communities, manga, and other nerdy crap. Follow her on Twitter, Tumblr, or her personal blog.

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  • by Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 02:48 PM

    Much respect & thanks for sharing this.

  •
    by Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 03:52 PM

    Very well written, and you presented your arguments exceptionally well. I just hope that the media will, someday, realize this and address the violent culture of the U.S., not just violence in video games.

  •
    by Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 08:48 PM

    Very interesting piece; great food for thought.

  •
    by Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 10:16 PM

    Well said Ali!

    I studied Cultivation Theory briefly in one of my communication classes in college but hadn't really given it much of a thought in regards to our current media situation...

    I've had to 'defend' our hobby to 3 people (2 coworkers and my father of all people) recently and appreciate the added info. Really glad you brought this up with as many cross-references and research as you did.

  •
    by Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 10:54 PM

    I very much agree with you on the majority of what's stated here. Thanks for taking the time to write this

  • by Monday, December 24, 2012 at 01:16 AM
    Glad there are other people who actually care about facts and research out there. This is the exact reason why i avoid the "news" as much as possible. The whole thing is 99% fear mongering. I was watching a local channel and a nightly news promo came on and their main story (i swear to you) was "how your sponge can kill you". Almost all news is one horror story after another, with a very rare uplifting piece sprinkled in and maybe once in a blue moon something that actually matters. I wonder what a child would be more likely to be influenced by? Thinking robots or nazi zombies are going to over run their town because they played some action games... or that they'll be gunned down at school or during a robbery or home invasion because they seen these actual crimes on the news everyday of their life?
  •
    by Monday, December 24, 2012 at 01:05 PM
    Your main thesis became muddled by pointless tangents. For one who purports to bring a higher level of discussion to the debate, you certainly engage in a bit of, to borrow your words, "pithy, uneducated, distracting arguments." Let us start with these pity, uneducated, distracting arguments, before addressing your main thesis: "Three, media does affect people, but its most dangerous effects are on a cultural level. Watching Leave it to Beaver probably didn’t convince many women to quit their jobs to lead lives as devoted housewives, but it did encourage the belief that there is an ideal U.S. American household (married parents, two kids, white picket fence)." Here are some benefits of a two-parent household: http://live.washingtonpost.com/onlove-pitfalls-of-cohabitation.html (There is a link to the study in the beginning of the article, but also interestingly enough, the article includes an interview with one of the principle authors of the study. Here is an excerpt, though I encourage you to read the whole article: "The Why Marriage Matters report focused in its first two editions on divorce and single parenthood. But as I was reviewing the literature on families for this third edition with my colleagues, I was struck by this fact: On many outcomes, children in bio- and step-cohabiting families look a lot like children in single-parent families, even after controlling for socioeconomic differences. So even though kids in cohabiting families have access to two adults they don't generally do better than kids in single-parent families except on economic outcomes. I think this is probably because cohabiting relationships tend to be characterized by less commitment, less sexual fidelity, more domestic violence, more instability, and more insecurity, compared to married relationships. Needless to say, these kinds of relationship factors don't foster an ideal home environment for children." Apparently, those "white picket fences" you so detest are quite the deterrent to criminal behavior. Or at least according to three decades of statistics compiled by the Census Buereau: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0307.pdf (Scroll down to the bottom, where it gives three decades worth of violent crime data and property crime data, according to metropolian, suburban, and rural regions.) Let us turn our attention to this little tidbit: "The U.S. is notoriously obsessed with war-mongering, gun rights, and rigid gender roles that force people of all gender identities to act aggressively in order to gain power." Left-of-center college undergrads are notoriously obsessed with making grandiose claims, without, of course, offering any substantial evidence for their claims. If you want to discuss "rigid gender roles" : http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2012/12/21/jill_peters_documenting_sworn_virgins_women_who_live_as_men_in_albania_photos.html An excerpt: “Becoming a sworn virgin or burrnesha elevated a woman to the status of a man and granted her all the rights and privileges of the male population,” Peters writes on her website. “In order to manifest the transition, such a woman cut her hair, donned male clothing and sometimes even changed her name. … Most importantly of all, she took a celibacy vow to remain chaste for life. Sworn virgins have existed for centuries. According to tradition dating back to the 15th century developed out of the Kanun, a tribal code of law, tribal clans from the Balkans considered families without a male presence as pariahs. When blood feuds decimated all the men in a family, the only way to salvage their honor was for a woman to become the patriarch of the clan and start acting like a man." Regarding "War mongering," are you referring to removal of Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Qaddaffi?....I am just trying to understand which elimination of tyrants you find so utterly, utterly terrible. Regarding the "obsession" with gun rights, you are aware that the primary legal document of the United States, the Consitution, describes gun rights? Let me repeat that: The primary legal document of a country describes certain rights. Not only that, but finding "creative" ways around the language of said primary legal document invites those who wish to strip away the other rights described in said legal document to do so. After all, precedent would be set, which is pretty important in the legal realm: http://www.uscourts.gov/EducationalResources/ConstitutionResources/SupremeCourtDialogs/JudicialInterpretationDiscussionTopics/Precedents.aspx An exerpt: "American law is based on the principle of precedent, meaning that if a court has already ruled on a given legal issue and another case arises with the same legal issue, the holding in the previous case will be applied to the new case." Ah, now to your main thesis: The title of this blog is "How to Use Cultivation Theory to Defend Violent Videogames," yet.....cultivation theory is pretty explicit in, as you mentioned, "...the real danger in violent video games that dehumanize victims and encourage killing sprees isn’t seen in the ways they affect individuals – it’s in the ways they affect a culture’s relationship to violence," ....which is the critique that the traditional media, and the NRA, has of videogames.
  • by Monday, December 24, 2012 at 08:56 PM

    I completely agree. Thanks for writing, and it really sums up a lot of things I had been thinking about, but had not really been able to put into words.

  •
    by Tuesday, December 25, 2012 at 04:01 PM

    Finally a voice of reason! An exceptional piece, Ali. Thank you for this!

  •
    by Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 11:41 AM

    Fairly good article. I thought that you kind of rambled on and took a while to get to your main points. Also, there were some things that were included that were irrelevant. With that sad, once I got what you were saying, I saw that there were some good points. It's nice to hear someone else's opinion.

  •
    by Friday, December 28, 2012 at 06:46 AM
    I'll keep it brief: First off, this deserves way more views than it has, and beyond that, more reads than many articles I've seen, including that Action GOTY list. People need to understand that there's a difference between a virtual world where rules are only present as we see fit, and real life where choices have consequences, and severe ones at that. Most games, films, and stories only reach the needed "umph" by going above and beyond what's reasonable in real life, which is by taking your character and putting them in a situation that goes as far as it can to put them in a situation of conflict with their characterization.


    Secondly, following any major media outlet and considering 99% of anything that they say to be the entire truth is a recipe for disaster. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but what better way to subdue an entire population than to keep them in constant fear of everything?

    Lastly, video games are a great form of imaginative relief from the boring workings of the day. Humans have been telling and enjoying (or loathing) stories for centuries, we're clearly not fit to be constrained within our own heads. :]
  •
    by Friday, December 28, 2012 at 10:30 AM

    This was a very well put together article and I learned something at the end, thank you very much for the hard work you put into this :)

  •
    by Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 06:18 PM

    Exceptional piece, Ali. As for the NRA, they don't understand why video games are simply a place of imagination; a place to relax.

  • by Monday, December 31, 2012 at 09:38 PM

    Well written, I must say.