Trendy Media-Hype of the moment
Never mind me... I'm just compiling a list of all the things over the past few years that were top headline news which were going to ravage the earth and destroy life as we know it.
Shark-Attacks
Kidnappings
Mad Cow Disease
SARS
West Nile Virus
Killer Bee's
(I'm sure I'm missing a good dozen more or so)
And now for the news media hype story of the moment!
BIRD FLU!
Give me a fucking break.
posted by N1K | 8:23 AM
2 Comments:
Nothing sells like fear. Gotta keep the ratings up ya know.
If you're interested do a Google search on "risk communication". Lately Rutgers professor Peter Sandman has been talking about how the risk presented by a problem is related to both the actual hazard and the fear (or outrage) presented with the hazard, i.e. risk = hazard + outrage. Obviously a shark attack is an extremely unlikely hazard, but it's communicated with a great deal of fear. Hence it looks like a big risk. However household bacteria is a much greater hazard but the perceived risk is very low because fear and outrage are not communicated when discussing household bacteria it.
Like the previous said – fear sells.
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