George Gerbner has been recognized as one of the most influential and prolific media scholars for over four decades. In this text, Morgan (communication, U. of Massachusetts/Amherst) brings together for the first time an extensive collection of Gerbner's writings. Forty-five selections are grouped into sections on Gerbner's early theories about communication, education and the media, early studies of media institutions and content, the theory and method of Cultural Indicators, Gerbner's key writings about violence, samples of Gerbner's Cultural Indicator studies on a variety of topics, and critical studies and opinion pieces on a variety of topics. No subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Telling all the stories -- Gerbner's early research -- Toward cultural indicators -- The violence profiles -- Beyond violence -- Critiques, advances, and critical contributions.

According to the contributors to this volume, the communications media deliberately blank out critical conditions and developments whose imagery would pose unacceptable challenges to the dominant structures of culture-power. Such "invisible crises" include the suppression of information about the dehumanization and stigmatization of groups of people; the drift toward ecological suicide; the neglect of vital institutions such as public education and the arts; the way in which television corrupts the electoral process; and the promotion of practices which drug, poison and kill. The book asks why the media are, in the view of contributors, withholding vital information from the public, and focuses on the increasing concentration of culture-power that, it is argued, keeps these truths from public view.

George Gerbner's cultivation theory provides a framework for the analysis of relationships between television viewing and attitudes and beliefs about the world. Since the 1970s, cultivation analysis has been a lens through which to examine television's contributions to conceptions of violence, sex roles, political attitudes and numerous other phenomena. Hundreds of studies during this time have (mostly) found that there are relationships between television exposure and people's worldviews, but important questions remain: just how big are these relationships, are they real, are some people more vulnerable to them than others, do they vary across different topics, and will we continue to find them in new media environments? In this collection of nineteen chapters, leading scholars review and assess the most significant developments in cultivation research in the past ten years. The book highlights cutting-edge research related to these questions and surveys important recent advances in this evolving body of work. The contributors point us toward new directions and fresh challenges for cultivation theory and research in the future.

Populism, misogyny, rampage murders. Digital media seem to lie at the heart of sinister, intractable social challenges. Curiously, the very societies who fear such things are often dismissive of media research. Addressing key issues affecting global media industries, this book explains how to solve the present conundrum by appreciating the historical development of cultivation theory. Digital Media Influence ties cultivation themes, such as mean world syndrome, mainstreaming, the celebration of white male violence, the ridiculing of ageing women, the inhibition of activism, the mediatisation of religion and the erosion of trust in education, with contemporary digital media case studies. Considering the aftermath of the Parkland murders, political memes, Islamophobia, the fate of female reality TV stars and the bad press directed at media education, Ruddock shows how these phenomena are born of media practices that cultivation theory began to dissect in the 1950s. Paying close attention to the life and work of George Gerbner, Digital Media Influence locates today’s questions in the historical forces and relationships that moved media industries closer to the heart of global politics in the mid-20th century. It makes Gerbner’s work relevant to all critical media researchers by providing a theoretical, methodological and historical steer for understanding new media influences. In explaining how one of the world’s leading media theories developed in relation to intriguing historical circumstances – many of them deeply personal – this book helps researchers of all levels to find their voice in writing on media issues.