Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory is the study of how watching television for long periods of time, can affect your perception of reality. For example, viewing too much crime topics on news shows can impact how the surroundings of the individual are seen. The creators of this theory were George Gerbner and Larry Gross, who began their research towards television viewers and how this impacted their knowledge towards the real world. The initial research involved television consumption, but it also includes newspaper, films, and media. Cultivation theory can lead to media phobia, making society more afraid of situations that either don't exist or are less common than initially thought.

The video viewed in class of John Oliver viewing the issues of torture is a great example of cultivation theory. These scenes that either are created in films by the media or actual situations in news, are seen by the observers as something that happens commonly in society. In reality, the torture methods are very scarce when it comes to implementing them in real life. Nowadays, we live in a world with great fear of being the victim of an unwanted situation. All these images that our brain processes create the fear that terrible acts are happening very often and can reach us at one point.