George Gerbner

Few scholars have shaped the study of communication as much as George Gerbner, whose output was both large and sustained. He helped build communication theory and research from the ground up, and his critical stance reshaped how people understand media companies, the messages and pictures they generate, and the effects those messages have on society and culture. He is best remembered for a long body of work on violence on television, yet his interests reached well beyond that subject into many other parts of the symbolic environment in which people live. Michael Morgan's book introduces Gerbner's theories of mass communication, his long-running investigations into media content and its effects, and the critical and policy ideas that grew out of them. Hundreds of studies have drawn on Gerbner's thinking, and this is the first book to offer a short yet full account of his contributions to the field.