Discourse of Fear

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 illustrate 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.