Fear Is A Fearful Concept
Fear — an unpleasant emotion caused by the disbelief that someone, or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. Fear — a concept that everyone has felt at one point or another. Either when indulging into a movie, TV show, or walking outside into the streets. Sadly, in the year 2019, fear is a concept we all know. Fear is unpleasant emotions we all have captured. We have captured it between each other. Thou, it’s not either of our faults. It’s the fault of the one thing we are all obsessed with; Media and Government.
In politics today, President Donald Trump, has helped to mold the concept of fear. Whether you are a supporter of our president or not, he has pressed the concept of fear, to get what he desires. In the 2018–19 Government shutdown, he feared over 800,000 government employees that they will not get the paychecks they deserve if they do not tell their Democratic politicians to vote for a wall. Trump also reminded his supporters daily that the individuals across the southern boarder are dangerous. Reminding us of current events, naming out statistics that Americans love to hear, to help him keep his supporters. As well as he created a fear on Media platforms, to not trust them. When in fact, they have also build fear in us.
I often think that the American people forget that just like Trump, our media forces are a business. They are a profitable business. They work with sponsors, to get their products to the public. They make you decide what to eat, what to buy, when to buy it, what to avoid, what trains to take… they pretty much dictate a huge amount of our daily lifestyles. Yet, we barely question them. We question YouTubers, celebrities, bloggers, vloggers, yet we never question cable news. Like what truly makes them credible sources?
In a recent research study, from Hyun and Seo, there seems to be two active media participation in how our news impact us. One of them being, Media Hostile Perception (MHP) and the other being, third-person perception (TPP) can provoke political action that counteract slanted media. One form of Media Hostile Perception is the perspective that each individual news channels choose to cover their information, and often times it can copy a third-person perception. Creating a solid one dimensional concept of an event that happened, even when their is multiple layers to an existing issue.
An example of this occurred, just last week, PBS, Vox, Washington Post, MarketWatch, CNN, The Guardian, and many more published articles demonizing a bunch of white conservative High Schoolers wearing Make America Great Again Hats. Accusing them of projecting the infamous Trump chant, “Build That Wall,” to a group of Native Americans, and individuals whom were Black. By only showcasing about a little more than one minute of material collected from a third-party individual. And narrating a piece that is perfect fit for the narration of fear to individuals of people of color accent.
In this example, the MHP is that a crowd of white male teenagers from a Catholic High School mocked Native Americans and people of color with their Make American Great Again hats. With the TPP of a small one minute video clip, the mass media was able to provide a form of evidence as to why their audience should feel fearful of individuals whom wear the Make American Great Again Hats.
After the video was released, the full video version became available to the public. Fox News, proved to public consumption that the information provided to the public was incorrect. After watching the full video, we see that these group of students in Make America Great Again hats, were simply standing there. And a group of black men called them by racial slurs based upon the fear created from that hats, that the Media presented. The Native American man, Nathan Phillips, entered into the scene in front of the young man, Nick Sandman. With both the MHP and TPP, the perfect form of ‘Fake News’ was produced.
Once incidents like this exist, President Trump only seemed even more credible to his supporters. The media produced fear from the concept of the MAGA hats, that was truly all man made by the media. Forcing individuals to start questioning and fearing the sources they have trusted for so long. Forcing them to be fearful of the unknown. To come to the reality that:
Fear Is A Fearful Concept.
Just remember, I, as a media source, may have been able to write a whole article on the concept of Fear, Media, and Government, but I, am simply an individual with an opinion. I was provided a platform to let my opinion reach individuals that may never know who I am. I, am no different then the media sources you watch. We have all created platforms to write opinions, from information we collected, and mold in a form, to get you at the end to feel the same. Well, that’s if we do a really awesome job. The truth is a YouTuber is not anything different then an anchor man on prime time. They are both businesses, they both have platforms, and opinions. The only true difference is how long they been able to survive, and their population following. The credibility is ALL the same.
So who are you going to fear? And what exactly are you going to trust?
