“The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear”

Abstract

The role of the news media in promoting a public discourse of fear is examined. A conceptual model is offered that is based on recent developments in communication formats and frames. The emphasis is on the impact of media forms and frames for guiding the selection and presentation of reports emphasizing fear (e.g., crime, drugs, violence). A "problem frame" compatible with format and entertainment needs is used by the news media as a secular version of a morality play. This promotes messages that resonate fear. The role of the problem frame is described as part of the process for promoting widespread messages stressing fear and danger. Materials from a qualitative content analysis approach, "tracking discourse," of selected news media illustrate how the focus and content of "fear" shifts over a period of time. Conceptual and methodological implications of this approach are discussed.The sociological imagination . . . consists of the capacity to shift from one perspective to another, and in the process to build up an adequate view of a total society and its components.C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination.Writing nearly forty years ago, C. Wright Mills was concerned that sociologists were blinded by limited theoretical perspectives that prevented them from seeing major social shifts, particularly the much heralded distinction he drew between personal "troubles" and "issues." For Mills, there was not enough attention to issues. Currently, there are numerous issues presented to citizens. Often cast as "problems," these issues are produced by entertainment-oriented media machinery. The mass media in general, and especially the electronic news media, are part of a "problem-generating machine" geared to entertainment, voyeurism, and the "quick fix" rather than the understanding and social change envisioned by Mills. Problems are routinely constructed through an ecology of communication, or emerging relationship between information technology, communication formats and social activities (Altheide 1994;. Victims are seemingly everywhere, laying claim to catalogs of abuse and social exploitation. A major theme transcending the specific issues produced by the postjournalism media is fear (Altheide and Snow 1991). I suggest that *Direct all correspondence to

Immunization Safety in US Print Media, 1995–2005

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Characterization of Urban Violence in Barranquilla as Portrayed in the Tabloid Press. Case of the Newspaper Al Día

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Bending opinion: essays on persuasion in the public domain

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