George Gerbner

Who was George Gerbner?

George Gerbner was a professor of communication and the founder of cultivation theory.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, he emigrated to the United States in late 1939. Gerbner earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 1942. He worked briefly for the San Francisco Chronicle as a writer, columnist and assistant financial editor. He joined the US Army in 1943, and later the Office of Strategic Services while serving, and received the Bronze Star. Gerbner was honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant. After the war he worked as a freelance writer and publicist and taught journalism at El Camino College while earning a master's and doctorate in communications at the University of Southern California. His dissertation, "Toward a General Theory of Communication," won USC's award for "best dissertation."

He had been Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and presided over the school's growth and influence in Communication Theory in academia. After leaving Annenberg, he became the Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunication at Temple University in 1997.