"What' s New Pussy Cat?"

“What’s with this wacked-out title?” you may ask. Well, I was thinking to myself (after I had finished talking to myself) that Friday’s class dialogue was right up my alley, like an alley cat pawing at a hobo. The cause of my intrigue is due to the nature of my thesis for my delightful paper. I pondered whether or not I wanted to blog about my nickel worth of thoughts (who likes just two cents worth?) because I might let the air out of my final project balloon. Then I remembered I had three blogs to do… Anyways, Gerbner’s second point in his cultivation theory got us thinking when he said heavy (as in a duration, perceived as four hours) viewers of television were more likely to perceive the world as “mean and scary,” like the above hobo is going to rob a store than kill me and possibly the cat. Now my thesis concerns how the news mediums portray crime and how that will affect us. One theme is how our news is framed, by what is shown and how it is reported, more like drama shows. Memos to those working at NBC News were to have news stories “display the attributes of fiction, of drama.” This is what a study liked to call “infotainment,” or less complex media content. That study showed that local news hyped with crime did increase fear of crime. Of course there were those who watched more comprehensive media content which led way to more complex thinking about crime and didn’t skew their thoughts to the same extent. Gerbner pointed out though if the heavy viewers watched television for more than ritual/entertainment purposes, this decreased the likelihood of being affected. This makes think that those types of people are more prone to watch the more complex content.