Why do we live in such a mean world?

Well the day has arrived. This will be my 5^th and final blog for Comm 321.  Today, I would like to discuss Cultivation Theory. Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner focuses on violence in the media. He believes that the violence we watch on television cultivates paranoia. When someone watches different violent acts on television shows, they believe they are more susceptible to those violent acts happening to them.  This is similar to the idea of Mean World Syndrome. This is the cynical mindset of general mistrust of others subscribed to by heave TV viewing. So the more someone watches TV, the more they think horrid things will happen to them.

Television causes FEAR in people

This belief comes from many different shows such as, CSI, NCIS, Law and Order, and Nightline. When violence such as murder, rape, and domestic assaults are shown so much on television, it is only necessary that people watching these shows believe that it will happen to them. They become paranoid that they will get jumped in an ally or murdered when they are all alone in the middle of the night. 

A prime example of this would be my roommate. She refuses to use HWY 20 alone or without the presence of a male. She watched a late night show such as Nightline and it scared the crap out of her. It was about a man who would spot young females driving towards Newport, pass them, and then during a part of the HWY where there was no cell service he would lay down nails in the road and cause the females to have car trouble. He would then proceed to kill these young individuals. 

Because of what she read or saw, she believed that she would be the next victim. Even though the suspect was placed in jail, she still believes there is someone out there that will do that to her. Just because something horrible happened to one person, doesn't mean it is going to happen to you. Peoples paranoia and cynical minds makes them view television (any type of media really) in the Mean World Syndrome way. 

Here is the link to the suspected serial killer I discussed above.

I hope everyone is enjoying the snow as much as I am! Goodbye blog world! For now... 

Katie Figoni

This picture was taken from Oregon State Ecampus's twitter. 

#fantasychain

Symbolic convergence theory (SCT) relates to group conversation. It is concerned with a group’s response to a story rather than the story itself. It has three main aspects and those are: Dramatizing messages, fantasy chain, and symbolic cue.

A Dramatizing message is  creative messages used by a person or group to describe a past or future event. Basically a message that describes something from a time other than the here and now.  Normally this message is a creative explanation and understanding of the message that was just presented. Generally dramatizing messages contain creative language such as a metaphor, wordplay, analogy, fable, or other expressive ways to express a message. My roommate “Jessie” displays this all the time. Whenever she is recalling an event to someone, she always makes it sound so much more exciting than it actually was or she describes events that didn’t necessarily happen. She likes to dramatize the message that she is sending because people seem to be more interested in what she is saying then rather than if she told her original story. She especially likes to use fables and narratives. I find it rather funny when she starts to tell a dramatized message when I was present for the event. I generally correct her on what happened because I don’t want others being fed false information. This leads us into the fantasy chain.

This is they primary symbol of "Drama". 

A fantasy chain is like an inside joke forming or a moment of silence whenever something bad happens. It is the agreement within a group in response to one of those group members dramatizing message. I like to think on the positive side, so I’ll stick to the inside joke. Because “Jessie” likes to expand more of her stories than what really happened, our group of friends has realized what happens and it has been recognized more and more so this chain is picked up by the whole group. This takes us to the symbolic cue. 

Someone might see this as a cool fantasy chain. 

A symbolic cue is the action or statement that causes a response from a group of people. This response is the same response that first happened when the original fantasy happened. The cue can be something like a nonverbal signal, a code word, or anything that will cue the entire group of the fantasy chain. The symbolic cue for when my roommate tells her tall tales is a smile and point to the mouth. Another symbolic cue that “Jessie” and I have for funny or awkward situations is saying “69”. No one understands what we mean by “69” and some people already see it as an awkward number. This just makes it even more hysterical for us. 

This can be used as a symbolic cue in America as a sign of a good job. 

Symbolic convergence creates group cohesion because it makes everyone seem to be more of an equal. It also helps relieve tension of being new to a group or if there is an awkward situation. In class when we were discussing SCT, we used hashtags a lot. That has become a symbolic cue for our class for the fantasy chain a dramatizing message that was created during that class period. This helped relieve the anxiety some students have about talking in class. More students participated and now we all have an inside joke between our entire class. Whenever I see someone outside of class, we will say a friendly hello and either say something like #fantasychain or just make the # symbol with our hands like see in the following video. 

We also started a twitter conversation and tried to get #fantasychain trending, but we ultimately failed. It was still fun though! This how we attempted to get the fantasy chain to move beyond the group level to the public level. If we would have gotten other students who are not in our Comm 321 class to start using #fantasychain then it would have moved to the next level. In other examples,it is basically an inside joke no longer being an inside joke. It turns into a joke that many more people know and respond to. Once it gets to more people than the original joke, it becomes public. 

Until next time! 

Katie