Gerber and Glassner's ideas that exposure to fear saturated media leads to people becoming more fearful and paranoid is a point which is probably true. In addition to people becoming more fearful in their own situations, becoming more fearful leads to believing more 'fear media' which just contributes to the cycle. And because of social media, sharing this 'fear germ' with other people is as easy as posting a link to a news article on facebook. These increasingly make it harder for politicians to get into office by improving care for widespread dangers and things that are proven to work; instead, those who promise stricter punishments do.
Gordimer's short story in which the family gets more and more security measures (most of which are ineffective and the last of which is deadly) because they hear about all these robberies and riots by the 'colored people.' Though it isn't proof of anything (because its made up) it does a good job of showing what an extreme situation of our fear mongering could look like, which is really scary. I think that if the public keeps putting anecdotes before real statistics this or some equally scary future is a possiblity.
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