Media and a "Culture of Fear"

Media and a "Culture of Fear"

Fear is a very powerful force in our current society.   The most devastating effect that fear can have on a society is that it causes people to act irrationally and in other ways that they typically would not act.   Edmund Burke once said, “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”   Specifically, fear causes many people to focus their efforts on risk management, rather than on taking chances that could be of benefit to themselves.   When addressing the people of the United States on the subject of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt firmly stated, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”   This important and famous quote illustrates the immense power that fear can have in a society.   Even when the United States was enduring one of its greatest hardships, President Roosevelt believed that fear was the greatest threat to the recovery effort of the United States because he knew that fear can inhibit progress.   Throughout nearly all aspects of modern media, fear is being used as a method of capturing the attention of the viewing public.   Particularly, issues of health are often presented with a dramatized version of the truth that is intended to convey fear to the viewers.   According to Clive Seale, author of Media & Health, “An important task of many media health representations is to emphasize the riskiness of modern life for audiences.   A stress on imagined danger may provide a ripple of disturbance to the basic security of viewers and readers so that an entertaining effect is created, stimulating further media consumption, and making the resolution of insecurities doubly pleasurable.”   The entertainment factor is very important if one wishes to understand why modern media has decided to pursue the use of fear as a way to capture the attention of its audience.   When people feel as though something may pose a potential threat to their health, they tend to focus on those...