A Single Study in Germany: Video Games & Cultivation Theory

it's possible by now you've heard of a study making the rounds that claims to a found no connection between video games and sexist attitudes perhaps you saw a link attached to a sentence like John mcintoshes entire body of work is based on a lie the people circulating this study are insisting that it officially disproves cultivation theory now something you may have noticed if you click to the link is that it takes you here to the study's abstract and you may have noticed there is no link on this page to the full report which does give me the impression that a lot of people talking about this study haven't actually read it as of recently I have read it so let's engage sincerely with this question does this study disprove cultivation theory there are a couple of answers to that and the first one is no because it can't it's important to understand that cultivation theory is not a new radical concept being pushed by a fringe group of third wave feminists it's nearly 50 years old it's broadly taken seriously by academics and is the third most cited theory in mass media studies saying half a century of research has been debunked by a single study is like when people point to a single guy who raised a thousand generations of peppered moths that never mutated and say it disproves evolution the claim has never been that these phenomena will always occur and that they can be disproved by one instance of not occurring it's just that they exist at all and that they're important the second answer to does this study disprove cultivation theory is also no because it's not actually trying to this study takes it as a given that cultivation theory is true and is testing whether or not it's present under certain conditions it cites some of the research it explains some of the theory it discusses a bit of the debate around the theories application and whether or not it should properly be called a theory but this is not a study about whether or not cultivation theory is real and by its own admission it is testing only for certain specific cultivation effects by its own admission it is only testing a very narrow age group and by its own admission its findings are not applicable outside of Germany where the study was conducted the relevant questions in this field do not include does cultivation theory exist but rather under what circumstances does it happen what effect does it have and how strong is the effect I guess we should talk about what cultivation Theory actually is now I'm not an authority here being that I'm not a sociologist but then if you're dismissive of cultivation Theory you probably aren't a sociologist either the original formulation of the theory in the 60s came from some studies arguing that in many but not all cases the more television people consumed the more their understanding and beliefs about the world started to mirror those of TV programs the broader application used now for not just TV but movies the internet video games and commercials is the media you consume can affect your worldview that's what the research says what a lot of laypeople here especially in the gaming community is something like violent TV makes you kill people or sexist video games make you hate women they think the person speaking is a scaremongering idiot like Jack Thompson that 90s lawyer who campaigned to censor video games because he argued Grand Theft Auto caused school shootings and a bunch of other [ __ ] and no matter how many ways critics phrase this people consistently hear these but Jack Thompson's horrible misapplication of cultivation Theory was never taken seriously by academics nor was it taken seriously by any major game publisher or for that matter any judges while he sparked a lot of conversation about whether or not games should be censored there was very little threat that they actually would be really the gaming community needs to follow in the footsteps of the Florida Bar Association and let Jack Thompson go because this sentence is not very controversial like this is not just modern feminism and Media Studies this is a core conceit of war propaganda of political speechifying of modern psychology and of course advertising when Don Draper says selling you a Kodak slide carousel really means selling you nostalgia for your childhood this is what he's doing every year people spend billions on the assumption that the right collection of sounds and images can influence what you think and how you feel about things and the data tends to bear this out for instance the candidate who wins the election is usually the one who spent the most money on self promotional media what cultivation Theory isn't is inception it doesn't say that violent TV will make you violent what it does say is the more violent TV you watch the more violent you may believe the real world actually is even if the crime rate is dropping and yes this is backed up by research if you're not a violent person that may make you unnecessarily fearful about say letting your kids play outside if you're already a violent person it may make you feel more empowered to act on your violent urges because you think they're more culturally acceptable than they are and nobody ever said it was true for everybody it varies from person to person and from show to show the best distillation of cultivation Theory may come from the title of a paper on the subject some genres have some effects on some viewers it's just that when popular media is consumed by literally billions of human beings some genres having some effects on some viewers can significantly impact society and to be clear that's neither good nor bad it's just a thing people absorb cultural narratives from dozens of sources media can be an important factor but it is just one factor and that one factor can be negative or positive it is widely believed that a major contributor to the Ku Klux Klan's resurgence in 1915 was due to their sympathetic portrayal in DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation and it's widely believed a contributor to their decline in the 40s was there mocking portrayal in the Superman radio serials and let's please keep in mind that gamers ate this [ __ ] up when Jane McGonigal said that video games could make you a better person they only started crying foul when feminist critics argued well if they can make us better they are at least capable of making some of us worse then everyone went apeshit and said let's just forget the whole thing then and before anyone says that's not fair Jane McGonigal talks about mechanics while Anita sarkeesian talks about narrative no they both talk about both the two are not easily separable do your research it's hard to get anywhere in this conversation because people want to boil it down to look are you saying games are good for you or games are bad for you games are neither their games their culture there are many axes on which they may affect you a game can be incredibly positive in one respect and kind of problematic in another and problems on one axis do not negate its value on another and vice versa and no major proponent of cultivation theory would argue with that okay let's get back to the study according to the theory there are two kinds of cultivation effects as I mentioned earlier watching a lot of violent TV might make you think the outside world is more violent than it actually is that's a first-order effect media has affected what you think is factual if violent TV made you think that violence is the right way to deal with adversity that would be a second-order effect here media has affected what you believe it seems a lot of studies into video games and cultivation theory focus on first-order effects which I imagine are easier to study so this was research into whether or not over the course of a couple years there were demonstrable second-order effects with regards to video games and sexist attitudes the final sample was about 900 German teenagers both boys and girls with varying degrees of game usage I'm not a statistician but it seems like their math checks out and the journal is peer reviewed so no complaints there the study was conducted over the phone where participants were asked to rate their agreement with three statements on a one to five scale and then asked again two years later the three statements were the man should be responsible for all major decisions made in the family in a group of male and female members a man should take the leadership and even if both partners work the woman should be responsible for taking care of the household that's the entirety of the sexist attitudes they were assessing a very 1950s father knows best idea of masculinity across the board they found no significant correlation between these attitudes and video game use average agreement with these statements was pretty low and two years later people disagreed even more strongly it all seems pretty solid I have no problems with the study itself the problem with the conversation around this study is that it's really not applicable to the actual conversation about videogames and feminism we're having right now the closing paragraphs say this study exclusively focused on second-order effects on attitudes towards gender roles however it may be that there are first-order effects on the perception of gender roles in society or second-order effects on attitudes that do not relate to gender roles but for example body image sexual harassment benevolent sexism or rape myth acceptance and these and several other topics outside the purview of the study are far more core to the current conversation then whether video games will turn you into the dad from Pleasantville studies into these topics are what get referenced in feminist articles about video games these are the studies that get linked to in the feminist frequency show notes the takeaway here is not that this study is bogus this is a perfectly chrome Yulin study into the relationship between video game usage and certain patriarchal gender norms and this is a perfect leak romulan study into the relationship between sexualized avatars and slut-shaming and this is a perfect leak romulan study into the relationship between objectification and games and the likelihood of harassing real-life women the takeaway here is that none none of these studies are in conflict with each other

Channel: Innuendo Studios

Views: 183,512

Keywords: Video Game (Industry), Cultivation Theory, Video Game Culture, Feminism (Literary School Or Movement), Video Essay, Ian Danskin

Id: AqxEFNFOVTw

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2015