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Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory is the concept that people's view of the world and how things are are affected by the media that they consume. The theory was developed by George Gerbner, a Hungarian Jew that immigrated to the US during WWII.  He went on to become the dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.  He postulated that, gradually over time, media (especially television), media makes the reality that it presents seems normal to its audience.

 In the John Oliver video about torture, it gives examples of how we've come to believe that torture of prisoners works.  We believe this because on television and in movies, it does work.  Oliver talks about the release of the CIA report on the interrogation of prisoners after 9/11 and how it concluded that torture wasn't effective at all.  This came as a surprise to many, given that media has cultivated us to expect torture to work.

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