Culture of Fear

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Beware of the Bear

In an effort to lighten the mood a bit i would like to share a story from Ken Kesey. While in Yellowstone National Park, he noticed a sign which read "Beware of the bear." Mr. Kesey thought for a minute and realized that there was a time when that sign meant "be aware of the bear", however, over time it has come to mean "be afraid of the bear." The same could be said about our current culture of fear. Terrorism, violence, and disease are all topics which we should be aware of, but the buying of iodine tablets to prevent radiations sickness by Californians after the nuclear meltdown in Japan, the purchasing of underground bunkers in the event of some catastrophic event, and emergency home rations take these issues too far. We need to address these issues in a rational, logical fashion instead of panicking. The media will not do this, it is not in their best interest. Their profits increase as more people tune in due to fear. According to Allison Ellwood Kesey was responding to the tension of the times (1964). With Kennedy assassinated and the cold war at its peak, "Ken was saying, 'Get out of the bunkers. Get out. Explore new things.'"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904888304576474092336084166.html

Terrorism

According to statistics from the FBI, there were two terrorism related deaths in the US in the years from 2002 to 2005. During this time, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that we were in a yellow or orange terror threat. According to the chart put out by DHS, this meant there was a high or significant risk of terrorist attack during this entire time.

As can be seen in the FBI graph, with the exception of three major attacks (1993 World Trade Center attack, Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, and the 2001 World Trade Center attack) which were responsible for 3151 deaths, very few people have been injured much less died in the US because of terrorist attacks. To put these deaths in perspective, an estimated 450 people die each year from falling out of bed*. Considering this data, it is unlikely that the US was made safer because of lives saved from the new terror prevention techniques. What about terrorist attacks? Surely with an estimated $4 trillion spent on the war on terror, those must be at record lows (Baum, 2011).

As can be seen in the above graph, there was one more terrorist attack during the years 1981 and 1982 than there were in the 15 years between 1991 and 2005 with the safest time being the mid to late '90s (FBI). Also, according to the NCTC (2012), in the year 2011, 17 US civilians were killed from terrorist attacks with an additional 14 wounded and 3 kidnapped none of which occurred on US soil. Of those killed, 15 were in Afghanistan, 1 was in Jerusalem, and 1 was in Iraq. With the estimated US population around 311 million people, that means that there were .0045 deaths per hundred thousand people.
So if, with the exception of three major incidents in which those who committed these acts (in my opinion) got lucky, there have been few attacks and even fewer fatalities, why is it that the media over the past 12 years would constantly discuss terrorism. Even if you go onto Fox News' website and looked for "terror threat" you find 3893 videos which, as far as i could find, were posted within the past few years (Fox News Search)? Fox News (and other news channels) uses the culture of fear (which they help to produce) in order to boost ratings. If someone is afraid that the world is coming to an end they will most likely want to keep up on current events and will watch more Fox News.

The excitement of fighting terrorists isn't limited to news, over the past 12 years countless shows have had episodes or, in the case of 24, have been created around a plot involving terrorist threats. I feel this works to constantly keep these thoughts in peoples heads and increase fear about these topics. In both of these cases, news and prime-time TV, increased fear means increased interest and increased interest means more viewership.

Department of Homeland Security. n.d. "Chronology of Changes to the Homeland Security Advisory System" http://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-advisory-system
Fox News Search http://video.foxnews.com/search?q=terror%20threat&sort=0
FBI. n.d. "Terrorism 2002-2005" http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005
Baum, Deborah. 2011. "Estimated Cost of Post 9/11 Wars" Brown University http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts
NCTC. 2012. "2011 Annual Report Final" http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf
*Unable to cite due to lack of reliable source. Several sites (all with the same statistic), however, cite the WHO and CDC as the source of this information.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Disease

As can be seen in this report from Fox News, the media loves a pandemic threat. It seems like every year we are told that a new pandemic is going to kill hundreds of thousands. The diseases range from swine flu, to avian flu, to SARS, to mad cow disease and these are only the major pandemic threats from 1996 to 2011. Although it is important and valuable to have a citizenry which is educated and cautious about disease, many media reports work to scare people into taking unnecessary measures and fearing everyone who has the slightest cough. For comparison, the following is an example of more responsible reporting about the swine flu.

The swine flu outbreak, although not nearly as dangerous as we were told it would be, did cause many to die but what about some of the others which caused many to change their habits and spend time and money to protect themselves against these threats?

Since variant CJD (mad cow disease) was first reported in 1996, a total of 217 patients with this disease from 11 countries have been identified (CDC, 2010). As of October 2009, variant CJD cases have been reported from the following countries: 170 from the United Kingdom, 25 from France, 5 from Spain, 4 from Ireland, 3 from the United States, 3 in the Netherlands, 2 in Portugal, 2 in Italy, and one each from Canada, Japan, and Saudi Arabia (CDC, 2010). Two of the three U.S. cases, two of the four cases from Ireland and the single cases from Canada and Japan were likely exposed to the BSE agent while residing in the United Kingdom (CDC, 2010). One of the 25 French cases may also have been infected in the United Kingdom (CDC, 2010).

What about bird flu? How many US deaths have been caused by this global pandemic threat? Zero. Although bird flu kills 60% of those who contract it, it is a relatively uncommon disease. The following statistics about bird flu were taken from the WHO (2010) and show that only 608 (less than 1/10,000,000) people world wide have ever contracted this disease.

Country Cases Deaths

Azerbaijan 8 5
Bangladesh 6 0
PR China 43 28
Djibouti 1 0
Egypt 168 60
Indonesia 191 159
Iraq 3 2
Laos 2 2
Burma 1 0
Nigeria 1 1
Pakistan 3 1
Thailand 25 17
Turkey 12 4
Vietnam 123 61

So a disease which, according to the media, was supposed to become a pandemic didn't even make it to a highly developed country. Even a more successful disease like SARS only managed to infect 8096 and kill 774 worldwide (27 cases and no fatalities in the US) (WHO, n.d.).
Playing to peoples fears of disease is not just limited to news. Shows like the walking dead and movies like Contagion use the idea of disease to sell tickets and ad spots. These shows use real and fictional diseases but constantly remind us that we could be on the brink of extinction.

So given the constant chanting of "the sky is falling" why do we continue to fear the constant claims of global pandemics? According to Tudor's parameters of fear, this is because when disease is the issue, the environment which is threatening is everywhere outside our doors. Like my blog about school shootings the media and culture is fearful of the disease making it seem more credible and like bullets, disease can even harm those who are not physically vulnerable in other ways. In the case of disease, the changing social structure is most likely globalism. From this it is clear to see that media tends to play towards our fear of disease in an effort to profit from our fears whether by selling movie tickets or ad space for gold and high tech underground bunkers. It is natural to be afraid of things which can kill us, but when paired with people who seek to profit off these fears, a cultural anxiety can be created which is bad for us all.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2010. "Epidemiology of vCJD and BSE" http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/vcjd/epidemiology.htm
World Health Organization. 2012. "Cumulative number of confirmed human cases for avian influenza A(H5N1) reported to WHO, 2003-2012" http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/H5N1_cumulative_table_archives/en/index.html
World Health Organization. n.d. "Summary of probable SARS cases with onset of illness from 1 November 2002 to 31 July 2003"
http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/index.html
Tudor A. 2003. "A (macro) sociology of rear?" The Sociological Review 51: 238–256.

School Shootings

The mass shootings shown in the media are unfortunate acts carried out by individuals who did not receive the help which they needed. These acts are tragic and any sympathy shown to the victims is deserved. The media however took these events as a chance to boost ratings by playing to people's fear. In the period after the Columbine shootings and in the midst of all the media hype, schools implemented new safety measures including metal detectors, emergency plans and drills, and profiled the very students who they claimed to be protecting. I know this because my school, Sweet Home High School, sent the police to my house twice to search my house because, as the officer told my mom when she asked what was going on "Your son IS planning to blow up the school." As I am not currently in prison for conspiracy to commit murder, I am sure you can guess that I had no plans to harm anyone in the school. Instead a girl who overheard part of a conversation which had nothing to do with school shootings, in a lunch period I wasn't present for, told school administrators that the people behind her in lunch were plotting to blow up the school. I occasionally talked to these people (I had gym with them) and so I was thrown into this conspiracy which did not exist.
But shouldn't we be worried about mass school violence or even school violence in general? Why are schools so violent? Why aren't we as safe as we used to be? These are all trick questions, as can be seen in the following graph, violence in schools has been going down steadily since the early '90s.

This is a graph of school violence related deaths (k-12). Most of these were, interpersonal disputes (120), suicides (88), gang related (53), accidental (16), bully related (12), during a robbery (9), sexually motivated (3) and hate crimes (2) (National School Safety Center). In addition to this, only in six cases were there more than two people killed two of which were bullying related and one being related to interpersonal problems (National School Safety Center). So there have been three mass killings between fall 1992 and spring 2010 claiming 29 lives (National School Safety Center). While these incidents do deserve media attention, the fear generated by the media was not entirely justified. With 311 million people currently living in the US, it would be safe to assume that over 40 million of those people attended school during the time frame listed above. When compared to the entire amount of violent school deaths (468), this would suggest that our schools, even with the occasional mass shooting, are extremely safe.

As can be seen in this clip, the message of the story is that you need to be afraid and always be looking out for the weird, depressed, isolated kid which, at least when i was in school, was a lot of innocent and good people.
Using Andrew Tudor's guidelines, we can see that the media is using discrete phenomena and classes of phenomena to create a reason for people to be afraid of their environment. The culture of the media also pushes people towards being fearful because increased fear will cause increased viewership. In the interview, Dr. Lipman points out how many will blame violent media. This is an example about how changing social structures can make many people feel afraid. Finally, the media also plays to the "Body" parameter of fear because bullets, no matter how strong someone is, will cause severe harm to a persons body.

National School Safety Center. 2010. "School Associated Violent Deaths" National School Safety Center. http://www.schoolsafety.us/media-resources/school-associated-violent-deaths

Tudor A. 2003. "A (macro) sociology of rear?" The Sociological Review 51: 238–256.