Transcript Fear Appeals

Fear Appeals
Fear Mongering and the
Culture of Fear
"It’s a campaign of fear and consumption…keep people afraid and
they’ll consume.” Marilyn Manson
Scare tactics are common
• Fear mongering increases during
“Sweeps” periods (February, May,
July, and November), when
Nielson ratings are taken.
– “Sexual predators on myspace.com”
– “Is household mold quietly killing
you?”
– “What your nail salon operator won’t
tell you.”
– “Thongs and skin cancer! Film at
11.”
Swine Flu: Oh s*#t, we’re all
gonna die!
• It’s a global
pandemic
• It could kill
millions
• WHO raised the
risk level to 5 on
a scale of 6
Or maybe not
• L.A. Times, April 30, 2009: “Swine flu spread may
be mild”
• regular flu (influenza) kills about 30,00 people per
year.
Bird flu: Death from Above?
• “bird flu is "a time bomb
waiting to go off,"
– Dr. Anthony Fauci, National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases,
• "society just can't accept the
idea that 50% of the
population could die."
– Dr. Robert Webster, virologist
Or media hype?
• “bird flu virus is still multiple
mutations away from being able
to pass easily among humans.”
• “bird flu appears to be better
absorbed by the deep pockets of
bird lungs, whereas human flu is
absorbed by the cells of our upper
airways.”
– Dr. Marc Siegel, New York University
School of Medicine, author of Bird Flu:
Everything You Need to Know About
the Next Pandemic. Los Angeles
Times, April 6, 2006
Other exotic diseases
• Mad cow
disease
• West Nile
virus
• Sars
• Anthrax
• Ebola
• Flesh eating
virus
• Yet, no one has died
from exposure to BSE
within the U.S.
• No one has died from
bird flu in the U.S.
Political fear mongering
• Nationalized hea;th insurance
and “death panels”
• Terrorism, terrorist alerts
• Social security
• Illegal immigrants
• Outsourcing of jobs to foreign
countries
Pharmaceutical industry and
fear mongering
• Is the purple pill right
for you?
• Serafem for
premenstrual dysphoric
disorder (PMDD),
(prozac for PMS)
• Pharmaceutical firms
claim they are
“empowering
consumers” by running
ads
• But are they creating
unnecessary demand?
• U.S. drug makers spend 2.5
times as much on marketing
and administration as they
do on research.
• 75 percent of new drugs
approved by the FDA are
me-too drugs “no better
than drugs already on the
market to treat the same
condition.”
– Marcia Angell, former editor
of the New England Journal
of Medicine
Child abductions
• High profile abductions
spur fear
– Polly Klass, Amber
Hagerman, Elizabeth
Smart, Samantha
Runnion
• News stories on child
abductions have
increased 10-fold in the
past five years
• Abduction prevention is
a big business
– GPS tracking, DNA
samples
• The actual risk of a child
being abducted and
murdered is 1 in 1.3 million
(Ropeak, 2005)
• Child abductions have
decreased in the past five
years
• 75% of child abductions are
not by strangers (e.g., they
involve custody disputes)
• By comparison, the risk of a
child dying from the flu is 1
in 130,000.
Other fear-laden topics
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school shootings
cell phones and brain cancer
identity theft
genetically engineered food
road rage
sexual predators
violent crime
Selling the fear of fear
• A number of popular best sellers
decrying fear-mongering have
appeared in print.
Keep the numbers in perspective
• School shootings
• Total school-related violent
deaths, August 1, 2005,
July 31, 2007:
• Shooting:
13
Suicides:
6
Murder-Suicide: 8
• Fight-Related:
1
• Stabbing:
4
• Other:
0
• Total =
27
• Compared to
drownings and car
crashes
• In 2003, 782 children
ages 0 to 14 years died
from drowning (CDC
2005).
• During 2004, 1,638
children ages 14 years
and younger died in
motor vehicle crashes
Keeping the numbers in
perspective
• 35,000 injuries per
year from nail guns
• Food allergy fatalities
100-200 per year
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Bathtubs: 337 fatalities
Dog bites: 15 fatalities
Fireworks: 13 fatalities
Hornets, wasps, and
bees: 46 fatalities
• Lightning: 63 fatalities
What really is dangerous?
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The number one cause of preventable deaths. There
are 46.5 million American smokers. About 440,000 of
them will die this year.
Forty percent of all deaths in the US are due to heart
disease - to the tune of 950,000 people lost every
year.
Cancer is our second most common cause of death;
550,000 people die from cancer every year.
There is an alcohol-related death every 30 minutes in
the US.
Obesity is a major contributor to heart disease and
diabetes, it afflicts 61% of all Americans.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases: There will be 40,000
new cases of HIV diagnosed in the US this year.
Caveats and cautions
• Use central processing when analyzing
fear appeals
• Keep the numbers in perspective
– Road rage: 40 deaths per year versus failing to wear a
seatbelt 9,200 preventable fatalities per year
– Shark attack 3 deaths per year in the U.S. versus skin
cancer 8,000 cases per year
– West Nile 100 deaths per year in the U.S., versus
drowning in a bathtub 300 cases per year