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Television Viewing and Aliens' Perceptions of the United States
Television Viewing and Aliens' Perceptions of the United States
Television Viewing and Aliens' Perceptions of the United States
Xueyi Chen
Doctoral Student
Syracuse University
S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
903 Comstock Avenue
Syracuse, N. Y. 13210
Tel: (315)423-8273
Email: [log in to unmask]
Submitted to the 1998 Call for Papers
Mass Communication & Society Division
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Television Viewing and Alien's Perceptions of the United States
Abstract
This study is aimed at examining the effects of television viewing on aliens'
perceptions of the U.S. social reality. A mail survey of a snowball sample of
100 mainland Chinese students and scholars at a university in New York State
from April 15 to April 22, 1997 reveals that television viewing significantly
correlates with the aliens' perception of the United States as a violent
country. It also demonstrates that television viewing alone doesn't account
much for the variance in the aliens' perception of the United States as a
violent country, but television viewing, together with the length of stay in the
United States and their previous impression of this country, does offer a good
model for explaining the variance.
INTRODUCTION
The effects of television viewing have been the subject of communication
research for many decades. Does television viewing truly influence individuals'
perception of social reality? Is the medium or the system the message (Gerbner,
Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1994)? Do relationships between television viewing
and conceptions vary according to audience from different cultures? Are there
any contributions of television to viewers' conceptions of social reality
relatively "global" (Morgan, 1990)?
The best known field of research that has addressed those questions has
been the cultivation theory, which was first proposed in the 1970s (Gerber &
Gross, 1976). Since then, the cultivation theory has been constantly
challenged, modified, and extended by various studies in the United States and
other countries. Efforts to improve upon the cultivation analysis have been
made through years; however, there still exists disagreement.
This project is designed to test the cultivation effect of television
viewing on aliens' perceptions of the U.S. social reality. The implication for
this study is not only for the international cultivation analysis, but also
for cultivation research as a whole.
THEORY
Cultivation Theory
The central proposition of the cultivation theory is that television cultivates
a distorted worldview in which individuals' perception of social reality
resemble the reality portrayed on television programming (Gerbner & Gross,
1976). Cultivation connotes the consequences of exposure to the recurrent,
stable and homogenous patterns of television stories, images and messages
(Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1994).
Since the cultivation theory was first proposed, there have been attempts to
challenge, modify and extend it. Early attempts to improve upon cultivation
analysis were the distinction between different levels at which cultivation can
theoretically take place. Various sets of concepts, such as "first-order belief"
vs. "second-order belief" (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990), "pessimism" vs.
"fearfulness" (Comstock, 1982), and "distrust" vs. "fear" (Hughes, 1980) were
proposed to explain why television viewing contributes to certain social reality
beliefs but not others.
As far as television violence and crime is concerned, it is theorized at the
cognitive level that exposure to mediated violence could lead viewers to
consciously hold a mean world outlook, overestimate the rate of violent crime or
the prevalence of law enforcement officials. At the affective level, it is
suggested that exposure to mediated violence could lead viewers to fear crime
and overestimate their own chances of being a victim of crime. Research into
this differentiation has shown that television exposure does cultivate
exaggerated perceptions at the cognitive level, but not at the affective level
(Hawkins & Pingree, 1990).
Prior Research
Early empirical studies of the cultivation theory focused on the effects of
television portrayals of violence, crime and the judicial system. For example,
many studies suggested that the more exposure people have to television, the
more likely they will overestimate the crime rate in real life; the more
exposure they have to television, the more likely they will overestimate the
number of people working in law enforcement, and their own chance of being
victims (for example, Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, Gross, Eleey,
Jackson-Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, & Signorielli, 1977; Gerbner, Gross, Jackson-Beeck,
Jeffries-Fox, & Signorielli, 1978; Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, Morgan, &
Jackson-Beeck, 1979; Elliott & Slater, 1980). Consequent cultivation studies
have been conducted in a wider field including sex roles, marital and family
difficulties, physical disability, health, attractiveness, age-role stereotypes,
science, educational achievement, politics, religion, and so on, dealing with
the relationships between television viewing and different aspects of viewers'
estimates, perceptions, attitudes, feelings and values (for example, Morgan,
1986; Perse, 1986; Potter, 1990; Sparks & Ogles, 1990; Morgan & Shanahan,
1991).
Substantial cultivation studies have been conducted on the public's perceptions
of social reality. The foci of topics range from perceptions about a mean
world, doctors, traditional sex roles, sexism, American stereotypes, to those
about black groups, black self-esteem, black group identification/mainstream,
the black separatist perspective, and so on (Wober, 1978; Volgy & Schwarz, 1980;
Bryant, Carveth, & Brown, 1981; Tan, 1982; Rouner, 1984; Morgan, 1986; Allen &
Hatchett, 1986; Shrum, 1995). Those studies revealed positive, although minor,
correlation between television viewing and the public's perceptions. Among
them, Gerbner and his colleagues' violence profile project might be most
far-reaching. Attempts to identify how television viewing influences social
perceptions have also been made.
In the past decades, the cultivation analysis has become more and more
sophisticated conceptually and methodologically; however, there are still many
questions open to discussion. Noticing practical problems involving in the
operationalization of the concepts in cultivation analysis, Potter (1994)
pointed out that the cultivation effect should be assumed to be a complex
non-linear relationship that is influenced to differential degrees by different
"third variables" at different points in the curve. He also suggested that
improvement could be made in designing the measures and analyses once higher
level of measurement, continuous distributions in scaling, and more
sophisticated statistical techniques be employed.
International cultivation analysis has been widely carried out. It brings with
it significant opportunities, challenges, and problems (Morgan, 1990).
Although the results of cultivation analysis tend to be less predictable and
consistent, empirical studies in various countries have revealed the extent to
which, and the ways to which, each message system contributes to conceptions of
social reality congruent with its most stable and recurrent messages and images
(Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1994).
Most of international cultivation analyses focus on the question whether
the medium or the system is the message. For example, in Britain, Wober found
little support for cultivation in terms of images of violence, while Piepe,
Charlton, and Morey found evidence of mainstreaming in Britain, highly congruent
with U.S. findings; in the Netherlands, Bouwman found weak relationship between
amount of television viewing and perceptions of violence, and some other social
cognition phenomena, but the results did reveal the importance of cultural
context in comparative cultivation research (cited in Gerbner, Gross, Morgan &
Signorielli, 1994). Gerbner and his colleagues believed that international
cultivation analysis is the "best test of system-wide similarities and
differences across national boundaries, and of the actual significance of
national cultural policies"(Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1994, p.34).
However, natives are the subjects for most international cultivation analyses,
have long been ignored. This study is an attempt to fit aliens in the
international cultivation analysis.
Hypothesis
Based on the cultivation theory, it is hypothesized in this study that the more
television aliens in the United States watch, the more likely that they think
the United States is a violent country.
The dependent variable is the aliens' perception of the United States, while
the independent variable is the television viewing.
Aliens in the United States includes people who currently live in the United
States but not the subject of the United States. A large amount of historical
literature has documented (for example, Head, 1954; Smythe, 1954; Greenberg,
1980)that there have been a lot of violence going on television, although the
recent reports (UCLA Center for Communication Policy, 1995; Gerbner, Morgan &
Signorelli, 1994) show that television violence tends to decrease. Therefore,
like most U.S. citizens, aliens in the United States can by no means avoid it.
Thus, consistent with the cultivation theory, the hypothesis is proposed. One
thing worth mentioning here is that this hypothesis is formulated at the
cognitive level.
METHOD
A survey was conducted in a university of New York State from April 15 to
April 22, 1997.
A snowball sample of the mainland Chinese students and scholars in this
university was surveyed. Mainland Chinese were chosen mainly because of the
fact that they didn't have much exposure to media violence, which is actually
forbidden in China. The questionnaire was listed in seven consecutive days on
the electronic bulletin board of the Chinese Student and Scholar Friendship
Union at the university. Some of the physical questionnaires were also
distributed directly to the respondents[1] on campus.
The survey instrument was in English. One week before the survey
officially began, a pretest of the survey instrument was conducted by both
email and direct distribution. Based on its results, the survey instrument was
modified and coding scheme was set up.
This survey was conducted by a Ph.D student at the university. The process
generated 100 completed questionnaires, among which 70 were collected by email
while 30 were collected by direct distribution[2].
To gauge the mainland Chinese perception of the United States, they were
asked whether they strongly agreed, agreed, were neutral, disagree or strongly
disagree with the statements that "I think the United States is a violent
country" and "I think the United States is a dangerous country." They were also
questioned about their previous perception of the United States before they came
to this country.
To determine levels of television exposure, respondents were asked how many
days they watch television in an average week, and how much time they spend
watching television on an average day. Their previous knowledge sources about
the United States were also asked.
The hypothesis was tested in three ways. First, regression analyses were
used to test whether television viewing has affected the mainland Chinese
current perception of the United States. Second, multiple regressions were
conducted to investigate what were the other factors that have contributed to
the mainland Chinese perception of the United States. Third, independent t-
tests were carried out to see whether their previous television viewing in China
had made difference in their previous perception of the United States.
RESULTS
The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between television
viewing and the aliens' perception of the United States. The hypothesis that
the more television aliens in the United States watch, the more likely they
think the United States is a violent country was supported.
Table 1 reports means and standard deviations of the television viewing and
perception variables. According to the survey, the average time respondents
spent with television was about one hour daily (around 25 minutes for television
news), with the average viewer watching about 4 days per week. Table 1 also
shows that the mainland Chinese perceptions of the United States differed from
each other a lot (1.12, 1.03, or .96).
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Table 1 about here
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Table 2 contains the percentages of knowledge source variable. As can be
seen, of all the respondents, 31.6% reported that their knowledge about the
United States came mainly from television, while 68.4% said that their knowledge
about this country was mainly from sources other than television, such as books,
newspapers, magazines, internet, interpersonal communication, etc.
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Table 2 about here
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Table 3 and Table 4 report the regression analyses of the television
viewing variable on the perception variables of the United States. According to
Table 3, television viewing in general was found significantly correlated with
the respondents' perception of the United States as a violent country (Standard
beta = .194, p < .05), which supported the cultivation outcome taking place at
the cognitive level, although the R square was pretty low (R2 = .038).
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Table 3 about here
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Table 4 about here
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From Table 4, we can see that television viewing didn't significantly
correlate with the respondents' perception of the United States as a dangerous
country. This is consistent with the results of previous studies showing that
the likelihood for television to contribute to cultivation effects at the
cognitive level is stronger than that at the affective level.
In order to illustrate the previous findings further, multiple regressions
were conducted. Table 5 shows the results of the multiple regression for the
perception of the United States as a violent country. It indicates that
television viewing was a more significant predictor of the violent world
outlook, holding respondent's length of stay, and previous impression constant.
As can be seen from Table 5, television viewing, together with the length of
stay in the United States, and the respondent's previous impression of this
country accounts for 37.4% of the variance in the perception of the United
States as a violent country.
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Table 5 about here
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In order to illustrate this scenario further, an independent t-test was
conducted. The results (Table 6) show that respondents' who mainly relied on
television for information about the United States were more likely to hold a
pessimistic perception about this country (t-value of -2.863, p <.005). This
findings also supported the previous cultivation analysis.
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Table 6 about here
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DISCUSSION
This project is aimed at furthering the elaboration of the cultivation
theory. I have built on the previous cultivation research which suggests
cultivation can take place at different levels. I have also extended the
cultivation research to the audience from different cultures.
Through a survey of a snowball sample of 100 mainland Chinese students and
scholars at a university, this project reveals that television viewing
significantly correlates with the aliens' perception of the United States as a
violent country, while this is no significant relationship found between
television viewing and the aliens' perception of the United States as a
dangerous country. It also points out that television viewing along doesn't
account much for the variance in the aliens' perception of the United States as
a violent country, but television viewing, together with the length of stay in
the United States and their previous impression of this country, does offer a
good model for explaining the variance. In addition, it indicates that aliens'
who relied mainly on television would more like think the United States was a
violent country before they came to this country than those who relied on other
sources. This implies a great significance to the basic question of
international cultivation analysis: which is the message, the medium or the
system.
Meanwhile, this project used continuous variables for measurement and multiple
regressions to analyze the data, which filled the methodological problems
threatening cultivation analysis.
However, some of the limitations should be noted here. Some important
issues, which might have effects on media use pattern and dependency of people
entering new cultures are not discussed in this research. Future research
should include more factors such as socialization.
The reliability and validity of this study were limited by several factors.
First, the sample was not representative of aliens' population in the United
States. Only mainland Chinese were surveyed, and all of them were
university-related. This threatens the generalizability of the results to the
aliens' population. In addition, the sample size was quite small. Only one
hundred mainland Chinese were involved. Future research should include aliens'
from other countries and non-student aliens. Thus it can not only contribute
to the international cultivation analysis but also cultivation research as a
whole.
As this study shows, aliens' previous impression of the United States
correlated highly with their current perception. Although it shows that
television viewing before coming to the United States did make significant
difference in people's perception, it failed to show how television affected.
Meanwhile, introspection and recollection measure used in this study might be
subject to random and systematic error; there is potential problem with the
validity of the measurement on how they relied on television for forming their
impressions of the United States. Therefore, future research should either
develop an accurate and feasible measurement of aliens' previous television
exposure or conduct similar research in other countries.
Another methodological problem is that although television exposure
measured as viewing days per week was found significantly associated with the
aliens' perception, television exposure measured as viewing minutes per day
didn't. The inconsistency suggests the significance of better measurement for
the future research.
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Table 1 Means and standard deviations for television viewing, and perception
variables of the United States.
Variables
Mean
Standard Deviations
N
I think the United States is a violent country.*
2.96
1.12
100
I think the United States is a dangerous country.*
2.78
1.03
100
Before I came to the United States, I had the impression that the United States
is a violent country.*
2.99
.96
100
The United States is more violent than I thought when I was in China.*
2.65
.94
100
In an average week, how many days do you watch television?**
4.15
2.44
100
On an average day, how much time do you spend watching television?***
68.81
62.93
100
* Responses were coded: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 =
disagree, 1 = strongly disagree.
** Responses were coded from 0 to 7 days.
***Responses were coded from 0 to 300 minutes.
Table 2 Percentage for knowledge source variable
Variable
Percentage
Before I came to the United states, my knowledge about this country MAINLY came
from:
TV
31.6
Sources other than TV
68.4
100.00%
(N = 98)
Table 3 Regression analysis of television viewing variable on the perception
of the United States as a violent country.
Independent Variable
Standardized Beta
Significance
R-Square
Adjusted
R-Square
In an average week, how many days do you watch television?
.194
.05
0.038
.028
Table 4 Regression analysis of television viewing variable on the perception
of the United States as a dangerous country.
Independent Variable
Standardized Beta
Significance
R-Square
Adjusted
R-Square
In an average week, how many days do you watch television?
.133
.187
0.018
.008
Table 5 Regression analysis of television viewing variable, length of stay in
and previous perception of the United States on the current perception of the
United States.
Independent Variables
Standardized Beta
Significance
R-Square
Adjusted
R-Square
In an average week, how many days do you watch television?
.214
.011
How long have you been in the United States?
-.316
.000
Before I came to the United States, I had the impression that the United States
is a violent country.
.475
.000
.374
.354
Table 6 Independent t-tests for the Chinese perception variables by knowledge
source.
Before I came to the United States, my knowledge about this country mainly came
from:
Variables
TV
Means
(&SD)
Sources other than TV
Means
(&SD)
t value
df
signifi-cance
Before I came to the United States, I had the impression that the United States
is a violent country.*
3.39
( .84)
2.81
( .97)
-2.863
96
p<.005
* Responses were coded: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 =
disagree, 1 = strongly disagree.
[1] Although some of the questionnaires were handed out directly to the
respondents, all the respondents have email accounts at the university.
[2] According to the university Handbook for International Students 1996, the
total number of mainland Chinese students and scholars was 174; therefore, the
response rate is about 57.5%.
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