Abstract

This thesis paper accompanying a research-creation video essay titled “Mainstreaming,” explores the impact of news consumption on individual’s worldviews, drawing primarily on Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner. The project explores cultivation deeply, especially the concepts of mainstreaming, the Mean World Syndrome, and resonance, while challenging some established notions and deterministic aspects of the theory. Employing a diverse range of methods, such as survey, interviews, and an experiment, the project focuses on four individuals, three categorized as politically left-leaning, and one categorized as alt-right in their news consumption profiles. The interviews of these subjects explore how these individuals actively curate their news intake and how the lived realities of these individuals do, or do not, come against the narratives of their media. Through experiment, the three left-leaning individuals were asked to alter their news consumption habits, revealing an active reinforcement and justification of their typical media. The analysis of the interviews and experiment leads to a reinterpretation of cultivation’s resonance. By establishing a difference between resonance that is more concrete versus abstract, the argument is made that lived experiences that are grounded in a subject’s lived reality serve as a means of preventing or limiting the effect of cultivation. The interview and analysis of the alt-right individual provides a case study in cultivation mainstreaming, highlighting a convergence in worldviews between him and the media that he consumes. The project overall suggests that individuals are not passive receivers of media’s messaging, and advocates for utilizing agency in the consumption of media.