I Am Not Invisible: The Impact of Age Discrimination in the Workplace

Ageism and age stereotypes are widespread. They shape the lived experiences of older workers. This presentation focuses on the results of responses to an online survey exploring the impact of ageist treatment in the workplace. The results of online surveys from 113 teachers over the age of 50 indicated that ageist treatment is widespread. An analysis of open ended questions addressing the stressful impact of being victimized by ageism indicated that feeling invisible, isolated, and helpless are the three most common responses to ageist treatment in the workplace. Being victimized by ageism presents a threat to older workers sense of self and feelings of competence. The cultivation hypothesis suggests that in technologically advanced societies such as the United States, people often rely on the media as a primary source of cultural information. Media images tend to depict older adults in ways that maintain and create ageist stereotypes. Our research suggests that the framing of media content significantly influences the self-worth of older workers. In this presentation, we discuss examples of ageism in the workplace, the family, and the media, and discuss ways of combating biased and discriminatory treatment. Based on our ongoing research, we make suggestions for ways of responding to and coping with ageist treatment.

Cultivation in the New Media Environment: Theoretical Implications for Future Studies in Pakistan

George Gerbner’s cultivation theory, originated in 1960s as part of cultural indicators project, has generated a plethora of literature about the effects of fictional entertainment programming on audience members’ conceptions of social reality. While cultivation research framework continues to attract enthusiasm and draw interest from scholars about widespread cultural effects of exposure to mass-produced messages of entertainment media, a review of the existing literature on cultivation theory shows that the theory may be facing new challenges in the changing media environment. This paper explores the history of cultivation research, discusses its theoretical assumptions and implications, and identifies various opportunities for testing and replicating cultivation hypothesis in the country in the context of the ever-changing media environment.

Fear of Crime and Cultivation Effect. Social and Psychological Predictors

Within the framework of the study of cultivation, the present research attempts to study the association between general TV consumption, particular TV news, and fear of crime. The analysis considers narrative transportation and system justification as psychological predictor variables; in addition, sex, level of crime in the area of residence, and social class as social covariates. Participants were 516 young (M = 20.5 years, SD = 4.7) Costa Ricans. A hierarchical regression analysis (stepwise) was made. Results indicated that people who experienced more narrative transportation, less system justification as women, and low social class, have higher levels of fear of crime. Results are discussed from the need to expand the cultivation hypothesis of fear of crime.

High-resolution tracking of microbial colonization in Fecal Microbiota Transplantation experiments via metagenome-assembled genomes

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an effective treatment for recurrentClostridium difficileinfection and shows promise for treating other medical conditions associated with intestinal dysbioses. However, we lack a sufficient understanding of which microbial populations successfully colonize the recipient gut, and the widely used approaches to study the microbial ecology of FMT experiments fail to provide enough resolution to identify populations that are likely responsible for FMT-derived benefits. Here we used shotgun metagenomics to reconstruct 97 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from fecal samples of a single donor and followed their distribution in two FMT recipients to identify microbial populations with different colonization properties. Our analysis of the occurrence and distribution patterns post-FMT revealed that 22% of the MAGs transferred from the donor to both recipients and remained abundant in their guts for at least eight weeks. Most MAGs that successfully colonized the recipient gut belonged to the order Bacteroidales. The vast majority of those that lacked evidence of colonization belonged to the order Clostridiales and colonization success was negatively correlated with the number of genes related to sporulation. Although our dataset showed a link between taxonomy and the ability of a MAG to colonize the recipient gut, we also identified MAGs with different colonization properties that belong to the same taxon, highlighting the importance of genome-resolved approaches to explore the functional basis of colonization and to identify targets for cultivation, hypothesis generation, and testing in model systems for mechanistic insights.

Ceiling Effect in Cultivation

This study addressed two fundamental questions in cultivation: Is the total amount of time devoted to TV viewing a stronger predictor of cultivation than genre-specific exposure, and is the cultivation phenomenon in some domains capped by a ceiling effect? Data obtained from a content analysis of complete seasons of three successful medical programs – ER, House, and Grey’s Anatomy (66 episodes altogether) – were used to compose a survey which asked a representative sample of US adults (N = 281) to estimate the frequency of health concerns that were identified in the content analysis. The results partly support the cultivation hypothesis in its Gerbnerian version because the total amount of time devoted to TV viewing was found to be related to overestimating the proportion of dramatic diagnoses (poisoning and injuries) and exaggerating the mortality rate of inpatients; however, no effect was noted for items concerning elderly inpatients, and no effect was found for viewing of medical dramas. Since the distribution of the items concerning elderly inpatients was prone to a ceiling effect, the results lent support to the idea that the cultivation effect is sometimes capped by a ceiling effect.

Cultivation Effects of a Newspaper on Reality Estimates and Explicit and Implicit Attitudes

This paper explores the cultivation effect of a newspaper on its readers’ reality estimates and attitudes. Additionally, the study tries to advance cultivation research by examining implicit attitudes (i.e., automatic affective reactions toward an object). A content analysis of four months of news coverage in one particular newspaper showed that foreigners were overrepresented as offenders and that the newspaper had a negative view of the EU. According to cultivation theory, it is assumed that the more people read a newspaper, the more their reality estimates and attitudes correspond to the most recurrent, stable, and overarching patterns of the newspaper’s content. To test this hypothesis, a total of 453 students participated in a study that used a cross-lagged panel design with two waves and a time-lag of two months. Consistent with the cultivation hypothesis, those who spent more time reading the newspaper were more likely to overestimate the frequency of foreigners as offenders (i.e., first-order cultivation) and had more negative self-reported attitudes toward the EU (i.e., second-order cultivation). Additionally, those who read more of the newspaper showed more negative implicit attitudes toward the EU (i.e., implicit cultivation). The data show evidence of a significant causal influence of newspaper exposure on implicit attitudes, and a marginally significant causal effect on the overestimation of foreigners as offenders and on explicit attitudes toward the EU. The consideration of implicit attitudes as an additional dependent variable could advance cultivation theory and research.

The Proto-Uto-Aztecan Cultivation Hypothesis: New Linguistic Evidence

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