Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis

TLDR

The creative use of news media and social control organizations has produced a discourse of fear, making danger and risk seem ubiquitous. This book seeks to interrupt the vicious cycle of fear discourse by marshaling significant data. The authors use case studies to show how organizations and social institutions profit from exploiting fear construction. The authors report that fear construction amplifies public empathy, leading to more reported victims, and increases reliance on law enforcement and formal control.

Abstract

The creative use of 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 construction. One social impact is a manipulated public empathy: 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 punishment: 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 discourse.