The definition of the Cultivation Theory from Wikipedia is "The more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television. This idea is very important because John Oliver was talking about how the idea of torture is influenced by the tv shows/movies that portray torture.
John Oliver talked about how 69% of people think that waterboarding is torture. Then he talked about how 57% of people think that these torture tactics work and help prevent terror attacks, when in reality these torture tactics don't really work as often as we think. The reason we think these tactics work, is because we see on tv shows/movies (like 24, as John Oliver mentioned) where the torture tactics ALWAYS work, and because we see this in this popular culture, we believe it is the same in real life, when it's really not. John Oliver was talking about how when they were torturing people to figure out where Saddam Hussein, the two people who actually gave information, ending up giving either false or ridiculous information and it didn't really help us that much.
I too was one of those people who believe torture worked. We were never really given any information that disproved that until recently. I do agree that television shows like 24 and others show us that torture works and we believe it. They don't ever show us when it doesn't, like in reality.
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