Media and Fear International Symposium

  • Tina Askanius (Organiser)
  • Zaki Habibi (Organiser)
  • Annette Hill (Organiser)
  • Rübsamen, M. (Organiser)

Activity: Participating in or organising an eventOrganisation of conference

Description

Fear is a key factor in today’s media landscape. A dynamics of fear frequently frames the news about the environment or immigration, it dominates discourses of security and surveillance, and it permeates people’s lived experiences in precarious times. This symposium seeks to address the range of forms and practices within which fear is mediated in its many varieties, researching across political and public spheres, policy and industry sectors, audio-visual content, digital and social media, and audiences and popular culture.

The politics of fear, both past, present and future, cast a shadow on the media and its power to shape and influence publics and audiences. Media often trade in fear at different levels of intensity, working within the political economy of emotions and anxieties about ourselves and others, or about individual lives and public institutions. The social construction of fear and insecurity in media representations, policies and regulations, and in popular culture, can highlight conflict and violence, and discourses of identity and othering. We see this in the imagination of fear in popular storytelling such as crime, fantasy or horror genres. We see this in the rise of populism within Europe or America, where the subject positions of ‘us and them’ can lead to xenophobia and political extremes. And we see this in the increased use of surveillance in crime and policing, intelligence gathering, or within commercial data gathering and geo location tracking, highlighting the pervasive presence of surveillance and the difficult questions that need to be asked regarding regulation and privacy.
Period2017 Mar 16
Event typeConference
LocationLund, SwedenShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

UKÄ subject classification

  • Media Studies

Free keywords

  • fear
  • narratives
  • cultures
  • politics