Television Viewing and Perception of Social Reality

Since the 1960s, communication scholars have attempted to examine television's contributions to viewers' perceptions of a wide variety of topics and issues. Unfortunately, little effort has been made to investigate the influence of television on adolescents' perceptions of social reality. This study investigates the relationship between television viewing and perceptions of social reality among Native American adolescents. It examines the relationship between television viewing and perceptions of sexism, sex roles, mean world, and television reality held by adolescents on five Indian reservations in South Dakota. It also attempts to examine how television viewing is integrated into these adolescents' lives and how television has become an important socializing factor among these Native Americans, who are very much unlike mainstream Americans in their culture, traditions, morality, and values. Within the clear limitations of sample and measures, the results reported in this study offer some support for the cultivation hypothesis. Although the findings are not statistically enormous, they seem to indicate that television viewing is related to 'Sexism,' 'Sex Roles,' and 'Mean World' indices. Since television sets have become common household items, television has become the world's most common and constant learning environment. Although some critics say that television has lost its magic so that most people regard it simply as Intercultural Communication Studies VI: 1 1996 J. Kang, S. Andersen, & M