Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis (Social Problems and Social Issues) (Social Problems and Social Issues)

The creative use of fear by news media and social control organizations has produced a "discourse of fear"--The awareness and expectation that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the exploitation of such fear 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 result 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 fear discourse. David Altheide employs a method, which he calls "tracking discourse", to map how the nature and the extent of the use of the word "fear" has changed since the 1980s; how the topics associated with fear, the topics of media discourse, have also changed over the same period (for example, the emphasis "moves" over time across AIDS, crime, immigrants, race, sexuality, schools, and children); and how certain news sources prevail over others, thus protectively insulating themselves from criticism of the premises of their discourse frames.

Taking advantage of electronic information bases, Altheide, whose previous interpretive studies of the mass media are well known, uses a "tracking discourse" method to show how the nature and use of the word "fear" by mass media have changed over the years. His analysis examines how some of the topics associated with fear (e.g., AIDS, crime, immigrants, race, sexuality, schools, children) have shifted in emphasis, and how certain news organizations and social institutions benefit from the exploitation of fear.

This book is about fear and its expanding place in our public life. The author documents the rise of a "discourse of fear" in the present era: the pervasive communication, sym­bolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk surround us. Altheide offers explanations of how this occurred and suggests some of its serious social consequences. In doing so, he focuses on the nature and use of social power and social control. The mass media play a significant role in shaping social definitions that govern social action. Relatedly, his methodological and theoretical foundation in classical social theory, existential-phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism leads him to view social power as the capacity to define situations for self and others.

Creating Fear is focused on sorting out the ways that the mass media and popular culture help define social situa­tions. It helps understand the nature, process, and organiza­tion of mass media operations, including news procedures, perspectives, and formats. It recognizes the need to expand our methodological frameworks to incorporate new infor­mation technologies and databases and to ask different ques­tions. This volume, which attempts to break the circle of fear discourse, will be of interest to sociologists, communi­cations scholars, and criminologists.

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 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 fear discourse 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 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 fear discourse. Machine generated contents note: 1 Give the Devil His Due: Fear in Its Place 2 Tracking Discourse 3 The Problem Frame and the Production of Fear 4 The Discourse of Fear 5 Journalistic Interviewing 6 Policing Crime and Fear in the News Media 7 Children and the Discourse of Fear 8 The Lens of Fear References Index.