WORLD SOCIAL SUMMIT 2008
'WSS: Altheide, contemporary language governed by the discussion on fear'

"Media have a harsh task: they must not minimize fears, but try to defend themselves from the accusation of amplifying them. This is a difficult position for which a new ethic should be conceived" with these words Mauro Mazza Tg2 Rai opened the debate on "fear and the role of media" hosted during the Social Summit held in Rome until tomorrow. "Fear was also explained, analyzed, sometimes amplified according to this view, but it exists and it is not imaginary. We must distinguish between fears and concrete and real dangers and fears of indefinite catastrophes of abstract danger".

The suspected collusion between politics and mass media with regards to uncertainty was crucial in the debate, theme that was debated in Italy after the elections won by the centre-right party.

Sociologist David Altheide gave a definition of "rhetoric of fear, of "topic of fear" and of "politics of fear". By launching a "blob" with a mixture of images containing key words such as "terrorism" "September 11th" " Saddam Hussein", Altheide analyzed the fear generation process. We are talking about "rhetoric of fear" because one of the consequences "of what I call topic of fear is that the language changes, giving new meanings, symbols to the view of the world", and therefore it is the same world to change.

With regards to the role of the media in creating fear, Altheide notices that fear was used by the American press more frequently prior to September 11^th. "What we produced in time is the topic of fear, consisting in the fact that risks and dangers are the main peculiarity of every day life". The mechanism consists in associating a fear to a problem, for example "fear of criminality", and then push it away from the phenomenon and bring it near to another one, for example drugs. The result is that fear disappears, but the phenomena remain mechanically associated to the citizen's psyche.

Since the war in Iraq, the topic of fear extended more and more. "The war in Iraq - says Altheide - would have never taken place as it did without preparing the citizens for many years". The "politics of fear" falls within this context. A government may help by diffusing the belief that "everybody can be protected and this allows to increase control over the society". The consequence is that the architecture and people's lives change. "Many people choose to live in closed buildings, buy weapons and accept to have a limited public life" and reciprocal suspicion increases.

"The war in Iraq was a non glorious period for journalists - admonishes Altheide - who have understood that many mistakes have been made for not having covered some clear aspects during the same war".

The flow of information changes as a consequence of this process. "The public is urging for prompt messages because they live according to an entertainment logic". But according to Altheide, "alternatives must be given to all of this".