Media contributes to our way of communicating new information and serves as a form of entertainment. Cultivation Theory proposes that the more a viewer consumes media, the more they are influenced by its messages. It is hypothesized that viewers are cultivating attitudes that the images depicted by media are an accurate depiction of the real world, and as a result, more violent than it truly is. This can be dangerous when it comes to news media as it disproportionately reports the most violent crimes and focuses heavily on sensationalized events. The term “Mean World Syndrome,” coined by George Gerbner, explains this cognitive bias.
For this Applied Theory class project, I created three digital art collage posters that represent the different effects of Mean World Syndrome and how news media can perpetuate one’s fears and anxieties about the world.
