"Fighting" For Cultivation Theory

Violence has slowly permeated its way into most of our everyday lives. One of the most common and efficient ways it does this is through media, particularly through television. Professor George Gerbner is known for coming up with a theory that discusses this issue called cultivation theory. Cultivation theory focuses on violence in the media, with TV as society’s “story teller”. A key component of Gerbner’s theory is the idea that heavy viewers are likely to develop exaggerated perceptions. The theory also focuses on the idea that violence we see on our television screens cultivates violence in our lives. This means it is possible for different attitudes, values, opinions, etc. about violence to form. As this is a sports and communications blog I thought it could be interesting to look at a televised sport which is all about violence, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In doing so I will look at how UFC and mixed martial arts create an attitude or belief that violence and fighting are just a part of life and how it cultivates the "mean world syndrome."I have added a short video below  to demonstrate to those who may not follow or have seen UFC what exactly it is. 

One issue that media scholars like Gerbner look at and fear, is that young viewers will imitate aggression and violence they see on the screen. Now when I say violence I should make it clear I am talking about what Gerbner calls dramatic violence. Dramatic violence is overt expression of physical force, with or without a weapon on self or others. It does not include verbal abuse, threats, or slapstick humor. The UFC is a prime example of dramatic violence on television, where two men are pit in a cage with the objective of knocking out or submitting the other. If we look back at the fear that young viewers will imitate what they see on the screen, we then must worry that not only are viewers learning fighting techniques they might imitate, but the attitude that fighting is a part of life becomes prominent. For example here is a video of two young children already being trained to fight UFC style. No child needs to know how to fight like this, but our children see the violence and fighting and want to imitate it. 

This belief or idea that UFC promotes violence as a part of everyday life is actually a consequence of what is called mean world syndrome. Mean world syndrome is the idea that we think the world is more violent than it really is because of media and TV. As a consequence of this (according to Gerbner’s theory) we are not only desensitized to violence but we believe that violence is normal, a good way to solve problems, and that everyone does it. I can personally attest to this as a UFC fan and college student who occasionally goes out with friends, that fighting has been desensitized and normalized to me. For example, when I was younger a conflict would never come to violence and if it did it was extremely shocking and traumatic in a sense. Nowadays when I go out with my friends if I am to see a physical fight between two guys to resolve a conflict I would see it as normal. Gerbner’s theory would point to the idea that by us watching these violent fights on screen violence is cultivated in our lives. 

I have added a video clip below (excuse the profanity in it) that highlights a bit more what the UFC is like and also points out how these fighter often don't like each other and use fighting as a way to handle this. After watching this clip it is quite evident that exposure to this kind of violence can make fighting seem like an everyday solution to personal problems. This is particularly in response to the UFC as they often will create story-lines between the two men fighting having them trash talk to create conflict. So just remember the next time that your 5 or 6 year old is watching UFC with you, that you are not only desensitizing them to fighting, you are teaching them that violence and fighting is what you do with someone you don’t like or have a conflict with.  

A last little tidbit about the theory that I found to be interesting is the idea of under-represented and over-violated groups in relation to media violence. In this part of the theory women, African-Americans, elderly and children are often portrayed as the victims of violence. In the UFC we don’t necessarily see this over-violation but what we do see is the under-representation. The UFC only just recently added a women’s division and has a majority of its fighters as white males. Although the theory generally looks at television shows as media and the under-representation, it is important to keep in mind that most of the violence we see on UFC is white male on white male.  

Overall it is quite clear that the UFC promotes an attitude or belief that violence and fighting are just a part of life and how it cultivates the "mean world syndrome." I think because of this it is important to teach people (especially children) that what they are seeing is a violent act that should not be repeated. This may be a difficult point to get across until we decide to stop glorifying violence as a masculine trait though! 

Until next time, stay cool!

-Zach 

SymBALLic Convergence Theory ...

       Despite the intimidating name, Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) is actually quite simple. #seriously #nothard #commtheory. Okay now you are all probably wondering what in the heck I am doing with these hash tags above. Well it all goes back to the class I am writing this blog for and is actually in itself a great example of a fantasy chain, which I will explain later. But first I want to give you a little road map of how this blog will shape up. First I will be explaining multiple aspects of SCT including dramatizing messages, fantasy chains, symbolic cues, and symbolic convergence. I will also discuss how SCT creates group cohesion and is a key component in group communication. I will then end by discussing how fantasy chains can move beyond the group level to become public. As you know, the theme of this blog is sports, so I will be using a personal example from my days on my high school basketball team where fantasy chains were the norm.

So what is SCT? The main focus of SCT is on group communication and the tasks and goals of the group, meaning it looks at getting tasks done and the social functions coinciding. SCT looks at building group cohesion which is the social glue holding the group together. In a highly cohesive group, members enjoy being a part of the group, support and interact with one another, and share in group identification. This will all make a little more sense once I begin discussing my example.

       A key foundation of SCT is dramatizing messages. A dramatizing message is a comment, joke, pun, story, anecdote, song, etc. made by a group member(s) that are unrelated to work/interactions, imaginative, etc. Think of it as the comment or joke that someone makes out of left field when working in class. It may be a funny Anchorman reference as our class often reverts to, hash-tagging everything you say (like my class does) or a random joke someone shares with the group totally off-topic. For example, my senior year of basketball my team was ranked 5^th in state and we were sitting in the locker room preparing for a game with our rival who was ranked 7^th. Needless to say it was a big game. As we are sitting there in our normal group dynamic (focused, quiet, adrenaline filled) one of my teammates randomly says, “Guys I have a confession, I love Third Eye Blind”. We all looked at him a bit confused as this was unrelated to our normal game routine and preparation. He then proceeded to belt out the song "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind.  I posted a link to the song here so you can see how unrelated to basketball it was. The whole team started laughing though and began singing the song and other light-hearted hits from the late 90s. In this case the dramatized message was the statement that he loved the song and the singing of the song.

         This led us to create what’s called a fantasy chain. A fantasy chain is anything the group collectively talks about, stemming from a dramatized message. A chain occurs when the group enthusiastically picks up the dramatizing message. So when our teammate brought up the song, if we all just looked at him like he was crazy and said nothing more about it, we would not have had a fantasy chain. Instead we thought it was hilarious and continued on with it by contributing our own dramatic messages or in this case funny random songs such as, “Getting Jiggy with it” by Will Smith. 

This pattern of us singing random songs, unrelated to basketball from our past established what’s called a fantasy theme. A fantasy theme is exactly what you might expect; it is the content of a dramatizing message that sparks the chain. In our case the theme would have been random songs. 

      After the joke slowly came to an end we went out and dominated our game, but the joke didn’t end there. You see there are things called symbolic cues which are triggers that set off group members to respond as they did when they first shared a fantasy chain. Cues can be code words, non-verbal signals, etc. For our team, I was responsible for creating our warm up CD's to be played over the courts speaker system before home games. I thought it would be funny to create our CD with nothing but those songs we talked about from our fantasy chain. So the CD started with Jumper from Third-eye blind and progressed to some other extremely non-basketball related songs. The first song of Jumper on the CD immediately acted as a symbolic cue for our whole team when they heard it come on. It served to create a bond between the team as it was something that we all shared together. This is how symbolic convergence is key in successful group communication. It creates inside jokes, bonds, and a commonality between group members that otherwise may not be there.

Now imagine all those students singing Jumper!

Sometimes we can see fantasy chains move from beyond the small group level to become public. This is usually done through forms of mass media like TV or internet related media outlets. But they can become public through good ole’ fashion word of mouth as well. Reverting back to my basketball example of the song jumper, we can see how it moved to more of a public chain. As we begin playing the song in our pre-game ritual our fans began becoming increasingly interested in why we were playing such a random song. Through word of mouth the story spread and our fans embraced the chain and began suggesting songs to play as well as singing along with the song Jumper. This created a bond between us and our fans as well! Other teams would come in to play us and were so confused why our team was warming up to Jumper by Third-eye Blind while our crowd was singing it. Here you can see a picture of our student section which was rather large for a high school, so the chain was clearly a public one! 

The chain helped us create a bond with our fans as well!

When we look at Symbolic Convergence Theory it is important to realize it is happening all around us. I think it can be a valuable tool for sports teams as well. As my example shows, a fantasy chain can be used to create a unique bond between teammates that may not have existed otherwise.

Until next time, stay cool my friends.

-Zach