What Does the Idea of Media Cultivation Mean?

ABSTRACT Over the past half century, media scholars have generated a large literature of empirical studies, criticisms, and reviews that present many different ideas about what cultivation means. Those meanings are analyzed across three major components of the cultivation literature: George Gerbner’s macro theory, the Cultural Indicators Project design, and the large number of exploratory studies that have attempted to expand the explanatory ability of cultivation. These different meanings for cultivation are then evaluated on the criterion of their potential viability to increase our understanding about media processes and effects as we move into the future.