Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.46640/imr.10.19.6
Simulation of Collective Anxiety and Media Phobo–strategy of Fear Politics
Jure Vujić
; Institute of Geopolitics and Strategic Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Real - time media reporting, accompanied by expert analysis of the spread of the infection on a global and micro level, contributes to the escalation of the social atmosphere of collective anxiety and psychosis. In this direction, pandemics of collective psychosis and fear always precede the introduction of totalitarian measures and create preconditions for bio - political and medical rule, strengthening of extraordinary control measures. Viral insinuation, mimicry of reactions, dissemination of viral fear, are integral phenomena of diffuse social - media violence that transforms the reality of panic - fear into phantasmagoric and often simulating collective anxiety. Today’s print, audiovisual and numerical media use consensually and skillfully leverage the marketing of fear. In this respect, the journalist (along with the arms dealer, politician and antidepressant manufacturer) is one of the few professions that trades in fear and panic. The media has become a powerful weapon of traditional fear politics that instrumentalizes the collective fear of the population to extort passive consent to the application of extraordinary measures that restrict fundamental individual civil liberties.
Keywords
viral; fear; society; politics; media; bio-politics
Hrčak ID:
262470
URI
Publication date:
15.9.2021.
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