Culture Of Fear

Book Review:

“The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things”

The Culture of Fear originally published in 1999 by Basic Books in New York, but was updated and enlarged for its tenth anniversary edition in 2010 which features new topics such as the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001, school shootings, and vaccines scares. The author is Barry Glassner a former sociology professor and executive vice provost at the University of Southern California. He claims that many Americans’ concerns and fears are largely unfounded; therefore, his book is focused on the question of why America happens to be a nation where fear is highly captivated in most of our social media and he seeks to find how and why people become fearful to

certain aspects of society. In his book Glassner also examines and exposes how the people who run these organizations of social media tend to manipulate American’s perceptions and how they end up making profit from the resulting fear and anxiety of the population.

Within the introduction Glassner points out that “Politicians, journalists, advocacy groups, and marketers continue to blow dangers out of proportion for votes, ratings, donations, and prof- its.” (Glassner, xxxiii) According to Glassner these organizations are advocates of fear who worry society with unnecessary and exaggerated stories in the media and waste billions of dollars in the process.

Chapter one is composed of fear that is found on danger roadways and campuses. For the most part Glassner argues about the strategy that the media use to influence fear on to its viewers, he gives an example of an ABC’s newsmagazine where the program’s co-anchor advocates fear by questioning the viewers about how often they have been bullied on the road either by a simply hunk or a cruse and how this can possibly lead to an aggression but Glassner counter argues by stating that “people honk their horns all the time

without getting socked or shot,” (Glassner, 3) Through this counterargument Gladdner is able to proof how media try to advocate fear into the public. The book The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things can be related to chapter of communicating: the media on the book Being Sociological where it talks about how media influence our society in different forms such as: economy, culture, and politics. These two books can be related because they both talk about how the media have learned to manipulate the society based on their needs. Reporting news that creates fear and awareness guarantee viewers, which is mostly the way of income for televised news. Media sources always manage to alter news to interest viewer’s attention to achieve higher ratings, which leads us to crime in the news, chapter two. In this Chapter Glassner emphasizes on the strategies the media use to advocate fear, he mainly gives different examples from different years where journalist tried creating a summery of a crime scene and failed to give proper information while trying to escalate the crime to obtain a better rating. Through the chapter you find different examples where media sources have alter their news reports to gain attention and increase fear into the viewers whether it is about crime, gang violence, car accidents, bank robbery, shootings, the media infiltrates their strategy in any way possible.

Glassner then proceeds to discuss the danger that youth are exposed to in the third chapter of his book. In this chapter he claims “suicide is the third leading cause of death for teens,” (Glassner, 54) due to bulling, school, violence, and other factors that can lead them to making such decision. Glassner also argues about other factors that put youth in danger such as drug consumption, kidnapping to make money off them, and illness. Similarly, in chapter five Glassner discusses the topic teen motherhood. According to Glassner teen pregnancy is a result of the nations educational and economic decline. The media always tend to give absurd statistics to influence awareness and fear to the viewers about this issue, but Glassner claims, “Early motherhood in itself does not condemn a girl to failure and dependency.” Once again Glassner shows how the media exaggerate to give a damaging image to these young mothers.

In chapter six, Glassner talks about how politicians and advocacy groups advocate fear. For example, politicians know they can receive more votes and win their re-elections if they can fund their program to benefit teen moms, the military system and the war on drugs. Glassner argues, “For three decades U.S. presidents and media organizations have worked in unison to promote fears of drug abuse.” (Glassner, 131) Moreover, president Nixon in 1971 started a campaign on the so-called war on drugs; he used this as a political strategy to get reelected. He made this issue the main public enemy that needed to be vanished before it kept spreading and this caused fear in the nation, this increased his followers rates that eventually led to his reelection.

The Culture of Fear is composed with examples and explanations of when and how these advocates of fear have successfully operated by spreading fear to the individuals.

Each chapter of the book is focused on a different subject, for example: chapter seven is focused on metaphoric illness; moreover, chapter eight is about plane wrecks and the fear many humans face towards it, not to mention chapter nine is based on his final thoughts where he analyses in detail how professionals user their strategies to “transform something implausible into something believable.” (Glassner, 207) Lastly, chapter ten is about the new fears expected to happen in the upcoming century, which are the same fear he had already touched based on but most recently arising will be terrorism, and war.

In summation, Glassner also talks about how we tend to shake our head and worry about the latest mass shooting while we fail to limit the access to guns to people who shouldn’t have them because they are a danger to society. We also fret over the latest kidnaping of a single toddler while millions of children live in poverty and attend schools were they are not given a good education yet we do nothing to help them. Glassner points out how we pay attention to any atypical tragedy while widespread problems go unaddressed because they catch no

attention.