Concept
resonance
When everyday life experience and television messages overlap, the cultivation effect gets a “double dose” and becomes stronger.
Resonance says that the cultivation effect is strengthened when everyday life experience and television messages coincide; they describe this as a “double dose”. The concept was developed in response to criticisms of the Gerbner team’s 1976–79 work; in particular, Doob and Macdonald’s 1979 Toronto study had shown that the viewing–fear relationship disappeared when the neighbourhood’s actual crime rate was taken into account.
According to Özer’s account, in Gerbner and colleagues’ 1980 article the relationship between amount of viewing and fear came out strongest among people living in city centres with high crime rates: the crime world on television and the everyday environment reinforce each other. According to the same account, in the elderly sample, who in reality also face a higher risk of becoming crime victims, the relationship between viewing and risk perception is stronger.
Resonance can be read as the complement of mainstreaming: while mainstreaming erodes differences among groups, resonance explains why the effect is stronger in some groups. Potter (1993) examined both mainstreaming and resonance among the theory’s assumptions. In Turkish the word “rezonans” is used untranslated (e.g. Özer 2005). Details are in the lesson Cultivation: Critiques and Later Findings.
Example
The fear of a heavy television viewer who lives in a high-crime neighbourhood coming out stronger than that of a heavy viewer who lives in a safe district, because both the real surroundings and the on-screen crime world speak in the same direction.