Heavy media exposure shifts beliefs about social reality towards the world the medium depicts.
Gerbner's finding that heavy television viewers overestimated their own risk of criminal victimisation. The mean world syndrome is the effect's best-documented component.
In practice
- A viewer who watches four hours of crime drama a night estimates local burglary rates several times higher than the police figures.
- A manager who reads only industry press about layoffs believes the sector is contracting while their own hiring plan grows.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience