Watching TV And Cognition Of Audience Cultivation

From the 1970s, Cultivation Theory had done comprehensive and in-depth research between the television use and the cognition of audience, which providing a method for our study of television in modern society. However, from the middle of 1990s, as the result of the social changes and the spread of technology innovation, more factors had intervened in the process of television communication, and more new media began to change the pattern of television communication. Thus, from the connotation of the theory to the research methods, from the variables to the construction of the mode, the Cultivation Theory had appeared the corresponding changes. As the classical theory of communication, the varieties of Cultivation Theory were not only the adjustments in accordance with the actual television communication in the multi-dimensional ecology of communication, but also a trend of development which had revealed the effectiveness and social impact of television. This study focuses on the essential feature, the adjustment factor and the relational scheme changes of Cultivation Theory. To grasp the contemporary television culture on the role of audience awareness, it contributes to achieve effective communication and scientific management in the new communication environment.Firstly, this study had comprehensively and emphatically combed literature of Cultivation Theory. It focuses on the development of the connotation theory, the changes of the research technique and the transformation of mode. In the aspect of the connotation of Cultivation Theory, it contains three development phases. In the aspect of the technique of Cultivation Theory, it contains three parts, that is, Institutional process analysis, Message system analysis and Cultivation analysis. In the aspect of the mode, Cultivation Theory has transformed its mode since the 1990's.Secondly, in order to give a more in-depth and clear description about the trends and the regulation of factors of Cultivation Theory in contemporary multicultural ecology of communication, this study would use a new meta-analysis, which carries on the quantification analysis to construe the study of cultivation from 1996 to 2008. As a kind of integrative, systematic and quantitative literature search method, the meta-analysis can integrate the different findings on the same research field. Thus it produces the more comprehensive and the more precise understanding to some research questions.Lastly, on the base of the meta-analysis conclusion, we will construct the mode of contempotary television cultivation. We will study the ideology connotation of television cultivtion. The plan of the next step study will be disscussed at the end of the paper.