This post is a little different from the rest. Instead of giving examples of the media selling fear, we're going to examine why we remember the "scary" things in the news better than any other. Most people I know, including myself can remember exactly where they were when the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, can you? This is what is referrred to as a flashbul memory. It is our ability to easily recall an emotional experience. This becomes even easier if the experience was traumatic.
I believe that the media lives on the fact of the flashbulb memory. The media makes news casts, movie trailors and commercials scary because we are going to remember them more than something that we could not make an emotional attachment to. Not only is the media making us fearful of everything from terrorist attacks to bee stings, but we are believing that we constantly have something to fear because the media is getting inside our head.
If you want to watch a short video explaining the flashbulb memory please click here. This website is a great place to learn more about perceived risk and why we fear what we fear.
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2 comments:
So what it sounds like is that there is no escaping this fear we experience when we see certain images. Can this be entirely blamed on the media? How different is this from what educators do? Educators find out what works for the general population to meet their goals and they do what they have to. No they don't necessarily instill fear, but the system does in some way and we build memory of certain things that the media turns around and used to entertain us, sell us things, or control us. Aren't we then willing participants to the control and are, in fact, contributing to it?
I don't think there is any escaping the fear. I believe that the media feeds off of the fact that we remember certain images so that we are sure to tune into their broadcast, or see a certain movie, or watch a particular show. It's closely related to psychology and I think the two coincide in this area.
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