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culture of fear – apophenia

November 12th, 2005

growing up in a culture of fear: from Columbine to banning of MySpace – What a great post from Danah Boyd

She has written clearly and acutely on the suppression and control of youth culture by media and our societel structures (school, business, malls etc). Here is an excerpt from her Apophenia blog.

I’m tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet. The choice to perpetually report on the possibility or rare occurrence of kidnapping / stalking / violence because of Internet sociability is not a neutral position – it is a position of power that the media chooses to take because it’s a story that sells. There’s something innately human about rubbernecking, about looking for fears, about reveling in the possibilities of demise. Mainstream media capitalizes on this, manipulating the public and magnifying the culture of fear. It sells horror films and it sells newspapers.

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