week 8 post 2

The media plays a massive role in the psychology and reactions of citizens to disastrous situations. Media has the power to entirely change the outcome and understanding of a situation based on how it reports the issue. Sensationalism is the use of exciting or shocking stories or language at the expense of accuracy, in order to provoke public interest or excitement, as defined by multiple dictionaries and Wikipedia. The short way to define this type of media is fake news. It takes tiny bits and pieces of a story, blows them out of proportion, and twists them around until an entirely new, more dramatic story forms. This is the type of media that occurs during stressful periods such as in 2017 with the ‘war with North Korea’, local news titles claiming the worst … to happen in centuries, and, most recently, the coronavirus. While all of these issues are and were relevant threats and issues, the media used distracting cover stories that blew the issues out of proportion, falsely informed, or focused on the wrong part of the issue. The media is currently more widespread and well received than ever before, which gives news outlets the ability to inform and aid the public on ways to stay safe. However, the media can also coerce the issue into articles about the end of the world, panic, and false conspiracies. This type of media is extremely polarizing and causes people to see other innocent people as villains and allows the media to blame the wrong people. For example, with Carona, the way some media has covered it has caused extreme xenophobia and hateful actions towards innocent Asian citizens because it paints these people out to be the villain. Other media falsely informed people of the root of the virus by blaming the white house, or by saying it was a virus created in a lab. While the Trump Administration can be blamed for many other faults, it is simply not a true statement to say that they created the virus. Over half of Americans have a false understanding of the disease simply because of the news source they read. 

This phenomenon is not new and even has a concrete definition and research to back up the psychology of it. This reaction is known as a moral panic or ‘panic culture.’ Moral panic is the feeling of fear spread among many people that occurs when some evil threatens the well being of society. Mass media and muckraking are essential players in the dissemination of moral indignation. This panic is enhanced by distorted media, which exacerbates pre-existing polarizing conditions. There are three distinguishing characteristics to this panic which are as follows: focused attention on the issue which creates the human idea of 'myself' and the other (the evil), Gap between concern over the feeling and condition the issue imposes rather than the actual issue, and extreme fluctuation over the level of concern over the issue. The coronavirus perfectly fits all of these standards. The media has led people to view Asian, more specifically Chinese citizens as the enemy rather than the government and actual issue. It has led people to worry more about the end of the world and themselves and how terrible quarantine is rather than thinking of how devastating the disease and situation could be for others. Lastly, Corona has had an astronomical amount of attention focused on it in a short period of time because of its severity. The volatility of issues like this and the distortion of them leads to hysteria over the wrong things. This, in turn, leads to significant repercussions in the economy, in social relationships, and the general wellbeing of people.