Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis

by David L. Altheide

The creative use of fear by news media and social control organizations has produced a "discurse of fear" - the awareness and expection that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the explotation of such fear construction. One social impact is a manipulated public We now have more "victims" than at any time in our prior history. Another, more troubling resutl is the role we have ceded to law enforcement and we turn ever more readily to the state and formal control to protect us from what we fear. This book attempts through the marshalling of significant data to interrupt that vicious cycle of fear discourse.

223 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[Alex Swirsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

i’m rly glad i committed to finishing this even tho my thesis is done. first of all i felt it was a very accessible and informative read. it was definitely well researched. and i think it’s rly relevant for today. this is perhaps best exemplified by a paragraph i’ll provide from the last few pages:

“The discourse of fear has major implications for social justice and especially our standards of justice. Fear destroys justice. A just society can never come from fear. Every oppressive society — particularly in the modern era — has been consumed with fear of the “other” and has justified the extreme horrific and often genocidal actions that have been taken as necessary to deal with the evil other. Part of the fear industry promotes fear by offering solutions that attack the objects of fear. Promises of safety, restitution. and so forth are exchanged for justice. Criminal justice agency officials, politicians, and the numerous social scientists that engage in research and activities involving victim advocacy, for example, often are promoting narrow, self-serving agendas that destroy freedom and promote vengeance and social control.”

Two examples of why this is so relevant: 1. watching ppl close to me become so driven by narratives of antisemitism promoted by social media accounts that profit off of pushing such narratives, that those who ik to be rational, kindhearted people, are now so scared they are wholeheartedly supporting the genocide of the people of gaza. i live somewhere so jewish that i didnt know abt antisemitism until like late in middle school, but @StopAntisemitism and accounts of that genre have convinced my mom she’s so in danger that she took down our mezuzah! 2. on a less personal note, people are so terrified of illegal immigrants either taking jobs or killing innocent young girls, because fox news snd donald trump said it so it must be true, that we now have brand new concentration camps built to house these immigrants, who are largely innocent and undeserving of such treatment.

given context such as that, this book rly resonated with me. also bc of its discussion of how the pervasive discourse of fear has led people to be so supportive of increased policing, surveillance, and incarceration, because those who benefit from the expansion of such programs come on tv and tell us we should all be scared and that we should be happy to give up our civil liberties so we can be kept safe. people are constantly being told they have so much to fear, which leads them to support the growth of repressive institutions, much to the benefit of these institutions and the politicians who benefit from promoting such agendas as well.

[Salahuddin Hourani]

ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد - عن ان الفزع والتوتر من عدم الامن ونتيجة لسرعةالتغير هما ككرة الثلج، فيولدون انفسهم بانفسهم ، فالمزيد من الذعر والخوف والقلق المرتبطين بالحداثة لا يؤدون الا الى المزيد من الذعر والخوف والقلق