Does mass news media make us fear every-day life?
- Sophie Baird
- Jun 5, 2020
- 4 min read
Nearly 5 billion people worldwide use mobile phones, so it’s fair to assume that most of us don’t live under a rock. We receive information about the world.
The thing is, we receive news, but we can’t control how that news is framed. That’s the job of mass news media institutions, like newspapers, radio stations and television programs.
They frame how we understand race, gender, religion, sex, politics and so on. The words and pictures they use have the potential to make us feel threatened by these things.
We are manipulatable.
This may determine whether we buy that security system or vote for the party who promotes a stricter justice system. Influencing how we perceive threat economically benefits a lot of stakeholders.
So, how do we know mass news media actually influences how we perceive threat in our every-day lives?
Threat and fear
We feel threatened when we feel fear.
To figure out what typically sparks fear, a 2005 study examined articles from The Arizona Republic, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and ABC News newspapers.
By focusing on the newspaper’s topics, themes and grammar, the researchers found that fear was associated with social class, gender, race, ethnicity, the police, drugs, children, schools and, in particular, crime.
It’s pretty convincing – a variety of newspapers were studied, and the findings were analysed using a number of programs. We’d be able to say most Americans and Australians associate fear with these topics… right?
The only qualm is that articles are interpreted differently by everyone. We have pre-existing worldly experiences, thoughts and opinions, so we probably wouldn’t understand the articles the same way the researcher’s analysis programs did.
In saying so, a quick glance at world history proves that ethnicity, gender, religion and social class have an element of threat – the result has been world wars, terrorist attacks, riots and murders.
Igniting fear through news media
The question of news media’s influence on perceived threat has been in the works for some time.
In 1987, a survey of 426 adults from Buffalo, Denver and Milwaukee aimed to discover whether paying closer attention to mass news media affected their fear of crime and behaviour. The participants were asked the same questions two years after the initial survey.
Those who paid attention to television had a greater fear of crime, but there was no significant correlation with attention to the newspaper. This suggests that television frequently reports on topics associated with fear and crime.
If the news makes it appear that threatening situations are common and we are likely to encounter them, we are more likely to perceive threat on a day-to-day basis.
For example, you’ve parked your car at your local shopping centre. The night before, you watched a story about car theft in carparks, so you purposefully move any valuables out of sight and check your car is locked. Car companies with high safety ratings would benefit from your fear because you’re more likely to purchase from them in the future.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what the survey participants got up to during those two years – perhaps there was a major local crime which, regardless of the news, made them more fearful.
In the big scheme of things, Buffalo, Denver and Milwaukee account for a tiny, metropolitan proportion of the world, so we can’t say these results apply to everyone, everywhere.
A very similar study conducted 19 years later aimed to see how fear of crime was shaped through different mass news mediums, including the radio, television and the internet.
After randomly interviewing 480 Washington residents, the researchers determined that fear of crime was only associated with news television.
Keep in mind that Washington’s news covers a significant amount of national political events.
So, why is television the only news medium associated with fear of crime?
In 1997 researchers analysed newspaper articles from The Los Angeles Times and newscasts from ABC World News Tonight from between 1985 and 1994 to see how the use and meaning of ‘fear’ changed over time.
They found that news associated with fear increased by 173% in the newscasts and only 64% in the newspaper by tracking key words like ‘crime’ and ‘violence.’
Apparently, newspapers are far behind the ‘fear’ 8-ball.
Don’t get too excited – we don’t know much about how this study was conducted so we can’t take it as gospel.
Did one person collect and analyse the data alone? Were the findings checked by another party? Is the data bias? What other key words were used, and how did the researchers decide those words were associated with fear?
Mass news media influences our perceptions of threat
To put the cherry on top, a survey conducted in the United States in 2008 took a blanket approach and asked approximately 1000 people over fifty questions about different types of threat – think national security, patriotism, foreign policy attitudes and so on.
They deduced that paying closer attention to the news was associated with greater threat perceptions, and that the mass news media was essential in making us perceive it.
Once again, these people have pre-existing world views and experiences, so correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation.
Every study, survey, interview and focus group that investigates how the mass news media affects our perception of threat is bound to have limitations. It’s simply impossible to control every single variable and to generalise results from one study across the entire world. After all, every country or region has different exposure to news, different types of news and consider different things threatening.
Although none of the research is 100% reliable, they all draw the same conclusion.
Mass news media influences our perception of threat.
It’s logical. If we see or hear something threatening in the news, we wonder how it affects our own life. What lessons can we learn from other people’s mistakes? What habits can we reinforce in our children? How can we avoid threatening situations?
Nearly everything we know about the world stems from mass news media.
Sure, we may hear about current affairs from our friends or from Facebook memes, but by following the daisy chain back to the top, this information is gathered from where it’s first released – the mass news media.
It’s okay to be influenceable… it’s normal to be influenceable! We should trust information from reliable sources, but we should also consider how it affects the way we live.
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