ABSTRACT
Gerbner and his associates (e.g., Gerbner & Gross, 1976a, 1976b; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980) have drawn much attention to the possibility that extensive consumption of television, especially of violence-laden crime drama, leads to exaggerated perceptions of crime in society, to apprehensions about becoming a victim of crime, to interpersonal distrust generally, and to fear of one's fellow citizens. In their theorizing, the heightened sense of risk and insecurity is said to increase the citizen's dependence on established authority and to promote the acceptance of its use of force in accomplishing social pacification. Television's “cultivation” of fear, together with the acceptance of authority that this fear nurses, is considered “the established religion of the industrial order, relating to governance as the church did to the state in earlier times” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976a, p. 194).
