The Cultivation Theory http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory06.htm
George Gerbner"The television set has become a key member of the family, the one who tells most of the stories most of the time."

-Gerbner's initial research on the Cultural Indicators Project in the early 1960's paved the way for an extended career of research implementing his cultivation analysis research method. Gerbner spent time at The Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania where he served as Dean while continuing his research on the social cultivation of television, emphasizing violence and its effects. He retired in 1989.

-The cultivation theory got its start with the cultivation hypothesis, created by George Gerbner, which states attempts to understand how "heavy exposure to cultural imagery will shape a viewer's concept of reality" (Pierce). Stemming directly from his work on the Cultural Indicators Research Project, Gerbner used the cultural analysis research strategy to cumulate his theory on television cultivation.

-Essentially, the theory states that heavy exposure to mass media, namely television, creates and cultivates attitudes more consistent with a media conjured version of reality than with what actual reality is. The cultivation theory asserts that heavy viewers' attitudes are cultivated primarily by what they watch on television. Gerbner views this television world as "not a window on or reflection of the world, but a world in itself" (McQuail 100). This created version of the world entices heavy viewers to make assumptions about violence, people, places, and other fictionalized events which do not hold true to real life events.

-Here, television acts as a socializing agent that educates viewers on a separate version of reality. The concrete base behind the cultivation theory states that viewers tend to have more faith in the television version of reality the more they watch television. We must realize that light viewing of television events tend not to shape an entirely separate reality. Thus, the focus of study is on heavy viewers. Light viewers may have more outlets and sources to influence their version of reality than heavy viewers whose main source of information serves to be the television programming.