History, Politics and the Evolution of Cultivation Theory

This book provides a cultural history of cultivation theory, a North American mass communication paradigm best known for arguing that television violence was a potent agent of political socialisation. Decades after its inception, cultivation theory remains an evocative force in imagining twenty-first-century media power. This book reveals how many factors shaped the theory: the spectre of twentieth-century fascism, the Cold War, political turbulence in 1960s America, and the realisation that tel