Developed by Gerbner (1973) “Cultivation theory claims that television cultivates, or promotes, a view of social reality that is inaccurate but that viewers nonetheless assume reflects real life.”
Cultivation analysis tries to ascertain if those who watch more television, compared to those who watch less, are more likely to perceive the real world in ways that reflect the most common and repetitive messages and lessons provided by television programs.
Cultivation theory is not concerned with the "effect" of particular program. Rather, it looks at television as the nation's storyteller, telling most of the stories to most of the people most of the time. While these stories present broad, underlying, global assumptions about the "facts" of life rather than specific attitudes and opinions, they are also market-and advertiser-driven. Television's stories provide a "dominant" or mainstream set of cultural beliefs, values, and practices.
Yuen (2015) affirms that strong relationship between TV viewing and changes of the concept of social realities. Thus, an individual who prolonged exposed in television, or in other words, being a heavy user of TV, his/her concept of social realities will be changed.
On the other hand, the findings also show that there is a strong relationship between use of online media and behavioral intention, which means if an individual is a intensive user of online media, he/she would intended to act in some activities and after a period of time, altered and to become a kind of behavior.
A clear example of this process is happening on social network like Reddit, where people’s behavior tends to reinforce each other, pushing people to act in real life, like it happened in the infamous “gamergate” case, where trolls started online an attack on female programmers of videogame, that ended up in violent actions in real life.
