Do talk shows cultivate adolescents' views of the world? A prolonged-exposure experiment

The traditional cultivation approach assumes (a) a uniform message across a ll television genres. (b) a nonselective viewing pattern in the audience, a nd (c) long-term effects. This study of possible effects of daily talk show s on adolescents involved a prolonged-exposure experiment designed to evalu ate effects of exposure to sequences dealing with lesbian or gay male relat ionships, transsexuality, and tattooing. The experimental design allows the study of the relationship between the content of a specific genre and cult ivation measures, independent of third variables. The results show that cul tivation effects occurred at both first- and second- order level. However, these effects were restricted to the particular issues. No transfer effects pertaining to a general change of attitudes were observed. It is concluded that cultivation effects are limited to both the genre and issue in questi on. Accordingly, the identification of cultivating messages within and acro ss different television genres should be emphasized.