ABSTRACT
At the heart of cultivation theory is the premise that stories influence how people understand the social world, and that most of the stories that are not told to us by friends or family members are told by a relatively few commercial media organizations from a profit motivated perspective. Given this, common themes about race, gender, wealth, and power pervade mediated stories. The consequence is that media cultivate inaccurate understandings of the social world in individuals and in societies. This chapter reviews the history of cultivation research, the processes thought to underlie the cultivation effect, and the challenges that face cultivation research in the 21st century.
