The example I found to demonstrate the 'culture of fear' can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/04/14/dozens-of-teenagers-are-now-tweeting-bomb-jokes-to-american-airlines/
The above article discusses an incident in which one teen tweeted to American Airlines about how she was a member of Al Qaida and was going to "do something really big" to one of their planes. This lead to her eventual arrest and sparked many tweet at American Airlines and Southwest airlines and include the word "bomb" in the tweet.
The three dimensions of fear play out pretty clearly in this example. The airline made the decision to arrest the girl after receiving her tweet. She meant it as a joke but they had the authority to have her arrested based on the way the rules or agenda regarding terrorist threats in our country are set up.
Fear of terrorism is a justified fear, but I'm not sure that it's appropriate to treat internet trolls as serious threats and expend the time and energy necessary to arrest them. According to what we learned in class, our perception of fear has increased while the actual risk of the things we fear--terrorism, for example--has not increased. Fighting terrorism and national security has been and will continue to be a political standpoint for people that want to get elected but the result of spending so much time talking about threats to our national security is an increase of fear with regard to threats of national security. This is a contradictory effect of fear. In my opinion, here's another one: security officials who are ordered to chase down every teenage girl who tweets about having a bomb on a plane make our country's fear of terrorism very exploitable. The very strength we use to fight pathetic non-terrorist threats is self-defeating--our country's strength is thus undermined.
I really enjoyed reading your blog you really hit on the key ideas of the culture of fear and I really liked the article that you found it is crazy how we can fear something so simple as a joke.
ReplyDeleteI too agree that arresting a teen for a tweet is slightly over the top without investigation into it but I see why they did. I would personally rather be safe than sorry and no one knows if that was a real "joke", sometimes things like this just need to be taken seriously and honsetly, after 9/11 I can't believe anyone would be making jokes about bombing a plane.
ReplyDeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteNice blog. After reading your entry as well as the link you provided, there was one thing that struck me as ironic and interesting. It seems like legal action was taken against the girl who made the original threat in order to make an example out of here, but that certainly didn't work, as more teenagers are making clearly exaggerated and/or sarcastic "bomb threat" jokes as if "Hey, I bet you aren't going to arrest me even though you arrested that one girl!"
While it might be a stretch to say these teens are trying to point out hypocrisy (you can arrest one person but not all the others), it is apparent that they are challenging the power of the airlines.
I really enjoyed this post. I agree that sometime things can be taken out of hand and cause much more of a ruckus than it ever was suppose to. It seems to me as if people these days find every little thing they can and turn it into a reason to be scared and be in fear. I think a lot of the examples are taken way to far by the person pulling the "stunt" but I see how all these things cause fear. Overall, good blog.
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