Blog Post 8

The topic I'll be covering in my presentation is how U.S. media uses fear to influence viewers in their coverage of both domestic and international news stories more than foreign media outlets and news agencies. I will be analyzing news article from The BBC and CNN, both related to international attacks on public figures. To do this I will apply the two concepts(you originally had us using five but dropped it down to two or three in a later class) of nationalism and socialization to identify what the primary work being done is and how using fear to evoke emotions might have secondary effects or blow back on both the viewers and U.S. media. I will also use apply concepts that we've learned about in class to dissect how the concept of fear is promoted by the CNN article compared to the BBC article.

BBC Article- The selected BBC article informed the reader on how an attack on the Vatican was prevented by Italian authorities through wire taps that alerted them to the fact that their may be an attack of some sort. they were issued 12 warrants that resulted in 9 arrests. The article stated factual evidence that was supplied to them directly from Italian officials and did not include any speculation on the motives of the individuals, the article only provided the factual history of the individuals criminal history. The article also explained all of this with a sense of calmness and levelheadedness, it did not use texts that someone might consider fear inducing or paint a picture of fear when describing the individuals or the possible plans they had conspired to execute. Over all this article is presented in a way that presents the facts to the readers in a logical, responsible matter and lets the reader draw their own conclusions to the story.

CNN Article- The CNN article described the same event, although in much different tone. The article starts off by using the descriptors of terrorist, Al-Qaeda, and mentions Osama bin Laden, all in the first four sentences. This is a pretty clear attempt to influence a reader to feel the emotion of fear before they get into the meat of the story because Americans have been conditioned to feel a sense of fear towards Al-Qaeda and terrorism since the 9/11 attacks and throwing Bin Laden's name in there does the work of giving a face to individuals who tried to execute this attack at the Vatican to the reader. The article then goes into the criminal history of the individuals, note that the CNN article calls them terrorists, neither did the BBC article call them terrorists or did the individuals have any confirmed connections to any officially acknowledged terrorist cells. We can see how in this article CNN uses the concept of buzzwords with subliminal meaning to draw fearful emotional response from the audience. Overall this article gives the reader a sense of fear that the individuals are out to get America by relating it to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and presents the facts of the story with a spin that reinforces the feeling of fear without letting the audience draw their own conclusion as to how to feel about the story.

This relates to nationalism and socialization because the CNN article is aimed at an American audience and the secondary work being done in the article is to instill a sense of nationalistic pride in U.S. citizens by getting them to have a unite feeling against these so called "terrorists". In regards to socialization the articles do the work of instilling a socialized culture of fear in the U.S. audience leading them to make decisions about government policy and social norms out of fear rather than applying reason to the decisions.

In conclusion it is clear how U.S. news media uses fear to  both draw viewers and to instill a sense of fear of world affairs in the audience. this work causes the population to act out of fear instead of reason. This work being done allows the government officials to act upon that fear by passing laws and policy that the U.S. population might disapprove of if they thought with more reason than fear.