Culture of fear

Culture of fear is the term used by some sociologists, anthropologists, media critics and intellectuals in general to refer to a culture in which the feelings of fear and anxiety are carefully and repeatedly created and fed by the mass media – through the manipulation of words, facts, news, sources or data – allegedly in order to induce certain personal behaviors, justify governmental actions or policies (at home or abroad), keep people consumming, elect demagogic politicians, and/or deviate the public´s attention from social issues like poverty, social security, unemployment, gun control or pollution.

According to some authors like linguist Noam Chomsky, sociologist Barry Glassner or writer-filmmaker Michael Moore, these manipulations would be carried out through the following techniques, among others :

• the careful selection and omission of news (some relevant facts are shown and some are not);
• the distortion of statistics or numbers;
• the transformation of single events into social epidemics;
• the deliberate corruption and distortion of words or terminology according to specific goals;
• the "election" of disqualified people as experts or "renowned" specialists;
• the stigmatization of minorities, especially when associated with criminal acts or degrading behaviors;
• the generalization of complex and multifaceted situations;
• the causal inversion (turning a cause into an effect or vice-versa).

Potential Examples

• terrorism
• tobacco
• recreational drug use (the War on Drugs)
• Occupied Territories
• Paganism & Witchcraft
• pedophilia
• asylum seekers
• weapons of mass destruction
• shark attacks
• africanized bee
• Health scares
  • Sudan I – a food scare in the United Kingdom
  • mobile phone radiation and health
  • obesity
  • HIV – sensationalist reporting caused many common misconceptions
  • Antibiotic resistance, for example MRSA known as the Superbug

See also

• Moral panic
• Sensationalism
• The Power of Nightmares

References

Books

• Culture of fear, by Barry Glassner.
• Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky.

DVDs

• Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore. A documentary showing how deep the culture of fear has strangled America with respect to the widespread use of guns and its comparison with the situation in other countries.
• Outfoxed – Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism (2004), directed by Robert Greenwald. A documentary detailing the right-wing channel Fox News manipulation techniques.

External links

• The culture of fear, by Barry Glassner – Introduction – "Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things"
• The culture of fear by Noam Chomsky
• Beyond a culture of fear, by K. Lauren de Boer – article published in the EarthLight magazine, #47, fall/winter 2002/2003
• A legal culture of fear – Common Good : safeguarding Americans from a legal culture of fear. Philip K. Howard`s testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, June 22, 2004