g-Think | Issue 16 | The Culture of Fear

By Markus Matthews
From Issue 16
Date July 2007

Topics Covered
Fear, Media, Nuclear, Terror

Comments

Fear is all-pervasive, and it’s addictive. Behind much of our rationale for what we buy, for voting the way we do and determining our vision of the future, fear is a basic ingredient of our existence. We coddle and protect our children from a myriad of threats, we seek to sterilize our homes and bodies, we drive SUVs once designed for military use and live in gated communities so we can cocoon ourselves from those seeking to do us harm. We fear for our future, for our children’s future, for our health, and we fear for our country. Every generation has its unique set of fears. In the 1950s it was “duck and cover” to protect ourselves from the nuclear bomb; in the 1960s it was the Red Menace; in the 1970s and 1980s it was fear of nuclear annihilation and the nuclear winter. Now our fear is centered on global climate change and terrorism. Fear today is being served up in huge doses, and often it seems as if we can’t get enough of it.

Fear, of course, sells. “Frightened citizens make better consumers and more easily swayed voters,” Barry Glassner stated in his seminal book The Culture of Fear, back in 1999. In recent years, corporations, marketers and politicians have had a heyday exploiting our fear addiction.

So what are Awakening Consumers to make of all the fear that’s out there? Are we easily scared by politicians, the media, marketers and corporations? Or are we skeptical or even immune to fear? How is fear affecting our spending patterns? Are we easily swayed or tempted by products that address our fear concerns?

In this issue of g-Think we attempt to address some of these questions. From the dust of 9/11 and our government’s attempts to utilize threat levels to keep us focused on terrorism, to the fear of China and the fear of climate change, g-Think attempts to place fear in a consumer context. As usual, we have the results of our g-Think survey on fear and, as always, we welcome comment and discussion.