Many television viewers construct their social reality from media content as well as from sensory and interpersonally communicated information. One aspect of this media-influenced social reality is television viewers' estimates of crime in society, or their fear of criminal victimization. Several media-effects studies have demonstrated the cultivation of perceptions of criminal victimization. Gerbner's cultivation hypothesis states that television content, unlike print and film media, is stereotypical and incongruent with the observable world. For Gerbner, the discrepancy between television content and "real world" content results in two separate realities, and the reality which guides an individual's orientation to the world depends on the amount of television viewed. Individuals who repeatedly see characters like themselves depicted as victims in violent encounters are said to be more apprehensive about their chances of becoming victims. Two of Gerbner's reformulations of the cultivation hypothesis--mainstreaming and resonance--investigate contributory conditions in which cultivation effects are likely to occur. Other studies of the cultivation effect consider the aspects of age, total viewing time versus the amount of violence viewed, the relationship between television viewing and anxiety, and the conceptual difference between fear of victimization and the probability of being victimized. (Seventy-one references are appended.) (MM)