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GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH
A PALGRAVE AND IAMCR SERIES
Media and the

Dissemination of Fear
Pandemics, Wars and Political Intimidation
Edited by
Nelson Ribeiro · Christian Schwarzenegger
IAMCR
AIECS
AIERI
Global Transformations in Media and
Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR
Series
Series Editors
Marjan de Bruin
Chair Technical Working Group Equity, Diversity and
Inclusion
The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
Kingston, Jamaica
Claudia Padovani
Department of Politics, Law and International Studies
University of Padova
Padova, Italy
The International Association for Media and Communications Research
(IAMCR) has been, for over 50 years, a focal point and unique platform
for academic debate and discussion on a variety of topics and issues gener-
ated by its many thematic Sections and Working groups (see http://iamcr.
org/). This series specifically links to the intellectual capital of the IAMCR
and offers more systematic and comprehensive opportunities for the pub-
lication of key research and debates. It provides a forum for collective
knowledge production and exchange through trans-disciplinary contribu-
tions. In the current phase of globalizing processes and increasing interac-
tions, the series provides a space to rethink those very categories of space
and place, time and geography through which communication studies has
evolved, thus contributing to identifying and refining concepts, theories
and methods with which to explore the diverse realities of communication
in a changing world. Its central aim is to provide a platform for knowledge
exchange from different geo-cultural contexts. Books in the series contrib-
ute diverse and plural perspectives on communication developments
including from outside the Anglo-speaking world which is much needed
in today’s globalized world in order to make sense of the complexities and
intercultural challenges communication studies are facing.
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http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15018
Nelson Ribeiro • Christian Schwarzenegger
Editors
Media and the

Dissemination of Fear
Pandemics, Wars and Political Intimidation
Editors
Nelson Ribeiro Christian Schwarzenegger
School of Human Sciences Department of Media, Knowledge
Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Communication
Lisbon, Portugal University of Augsburg
Augsburg, Germany
ISSN 2634-5978 ISSN 2634-5986 (electronic)

Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and
IAMCR Series
ISBN 978-3-030-84988-7 ISBN 978-3-030-84989-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84989-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Praise for Media and the Dissemination of Fear
“The collection edited by Ribeiro and Schwarzenegger clearly shows how a his-
torical perspective on media and communication fears is timely and relevant. With
the diachronic, intermedia and transcultural perspectives collected in this volume,
editors and authors show the persistence and continuity of how media were and
are used to disseminate, counter or simply feast on fear. For everyone interested in
the longer history of what is nowadays discussed as affective publics, hate speech,
populism and fake news this is a must read.”
—Gabriele Balbi, Associate Professor in Media Studies,
Università della Svizzera italiana
Contents
1 Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic, Intermedia,

and Transcultural Perspectives on a Toxic and Functional
Relationship during Pandemics, Wars, and Political Crises 1
Nelson Ribeiro and Christian Schwarzenegger
Part I Disseminating and Mitigating Fear During Pandemics

and Disasters 17
2 From Black Death to COVID-19: The Mediated

Dissemination of Fear in Pandemic Times 19
Anna Wagner and Doreen Reifegerste
3 Hebrew Popular Press, Catastrophe Stories, and the

Instigation of Fear in Ottoman Palestine 43
Ouzi Elyada
vii
viii Contents
Part II Spreading Fear Across Borders: Journalism and

Alternative Media 59
4 Fear-Relations: Word War I, Military Authorities, and the

International Feminist Peace Movement 61
Susanne Kinnebrock
5 Voices for a World In-Between? Exile Media as

Transnational Fulcrums Between Confidence and Fear 83
Christian Schwarzenegger and Gabriele Falböck
6 Terror, Fear, Disbelief, and Complacency in the Face of

Evil: The Reactions of the Hebrew Press in Palestine to
the First News on the Extermination of the European
Jewry by the Nazis in 1942107
Gideon Kouts
7 The News Media and the Ever-Present Fear in the

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict129
Thomas Birkner, Aysha Agbarya, Oren Meyers, and Rachel
Somerstein
Part III State-Sponsored Fear and Intimidation 153
8 Fear of the Spanish Red Danger: Anti-Communist

Agitation and Mobilisation in Portugal during the
Spanish Civil War155
Alberto Pena-Rodríguez
9 Nazi Broadcasts to a Neutral Country: Disseminating

Fear in Portugal during the Second World War177
Nelson Ribeiro
Contents ix
10 Fear of Communism in the Twentieth-Century United

States and the Vietnam War199
Paul Haridakis
11 “Beware of Terrorists, Spies and Chaos!”: Stabilization

Techniques from the Arab Uprisings221
Hanan Badr
12 Educate Online Through Online Fear: Exploring the

Chinese Rumours Online Phenomenon247
Gianluigi Negro
13 Media Logic, Terrorism, and the Politics of Fear275

David L. Altheide
Index301
Notes on Contributors
Aysha Agbarya is a PhD student at the Department of Communication

at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She holds a Master’s and a
Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Haifa University, as well as
professional experience in journalism. She is also a teacher in the commu-
nication department at the Open University and a social activist.
Her research interests include media use in everyday life, identity and
de-westernization of communication theories. Her current research
focuses on the relations between social media use and identity.
David L. Altheide is Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of
Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at
Arizona State University, where he taught for 37 years. His work has
focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social
control. His most recent books are Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (2nd
Edition, 2017) and The Media Syndrome (2016). His awards from the
SSSI include the Cooley Award for Outstanding Book (three times), the
George Herbert Mead Award for lifetime contributions and the Mentor
Achievement Award. A forthcoming book is Gonzo Governance: The Media
Logic of Donald Trump.
Hanan Badr, DPhil is an associate professor at the Gulf University for
Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait. She held positions at Freie
Universität Berlin, Cairo University and Orient-Institut Beirut/Max
Weber Foundation. Hanan won awards including the Kluge Fellowship at
the Library of Congress, DAAD Doctoral Scholarship and is currently
vice-chair of the Activism, Communication and Social Change Interest
xi
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Group at the International Communication Association (ICA). Her

research focuses on public sphere, inequality and transformation in the
Arab region and Europe, and comparative media systems. She recently
published in Digital Journalism and International Communication
Gazette.
Thomas Birkner Dr, is Privatdozent in the Department of
Communication at the University of Münster, Germany, and a former
Visiting Professor at the University of Munich, Germany. From 2016 to
2020 he has been chair of the Communication History Division of the
German Communication Association, DGPuK. His main research inter-
ests include journalism research, political communication, communication
history and media and memory. Thomas has published and edited several
books and recently published his research in journals like Communication
Theory, Digital Journalism and Memory Studies.
Ouzi Elyada is a professor emeritus at the University of Haifa (Department
of Communication and Department of General History). His main
research interests are the history of popular media and journalism in
France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, history of popular
Hebrew media and popular journalism in Palestine in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. His research focuses also on historiography and the
relations between media and memory. His latest book, Hebrew Popular
Journalism: Birth and Development in Ottoman Palestine, was published
in 2019.
Gabriele Falböck Dr, is researcher and lecturer at the University of
Vienna and at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, Austria. Since
2012 she is head of the Working Committee for Historical Communication
Research (AHK), editing the journal Medien & Zeit. Her research inter-
ests are migration and ethno media, historical analysis of media for chil-
dren and their usage, mediated memory and identities. Gaby has published
in The Handbook of European Communication History and the Handbook
of Media Economy.
Paul Haridakis is professor in and director of the School of
Communication Studies at Kent State University (USA). His main research
interests are in the areas of freedom of speech, political communication,
intergroup communication, history and media uses and effects. Paul is co-
author/editor of five books and more than 60 articles/book chapters.
Notes on Contributors xiii
Susanne Kinnebrock is Professor of Public Communication at the

University of Augsburg, Germany, and director of the Department of
Media, Knowledge and Communication. Her main research interests are
communication history, gender media studies, narrative journalism, health
communication and science communication. She was one of the founding
chairs of the ECREA Communication History Section (2010–2016) and
is currently on the board of the Archives of Women’s Movement in
Germany.
Gideon Kouts is Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish History, Culture
and Communication; head of the European Institute of Hebrew Studies
at Paris 8 University, France. He is a research fellow at Tel Aviv University
Center for International and Regional Studies; the editor of REEH-
European Journal of Hebrew Studies and of Kesher-Journal of Jewish Press
and Communications History Research. His research focuses on Jewish
press history, as well as international communications and foreign report-
ing, propaganda and national identity studies. In 2013 he published News
and History: Studies in History of Hebrew and Jewish Press and
Communications.
Oren Meyers is an associate professor and chair of the Department of
Communication, University of Haifa. His research interests focus on jour-
nalistic practices and values, collective memory and popular culture. His
studies have been supported by the Israel Science Foundation, the Ministry
of Science and Technology and other funding agencies. His recent publi-
cations include: “Mnemonic newswork: Exploring the role of journalism
in the rereading of national pasts”, in Park & Maurantonio (Eds.).
Communicating Memory & History (2018) and “The critical potential of
commemorative journalism” published in 2021 Journalism.
Gianluigi Negro is an assistant professor at the University of Siena
(Department of Philology and Literary Criticism) and research fellow at
the China Media Observatory (CMO), Università della Svizzera italiana
(USI), Switzerland. After his PhD at the Università della Svizzera italiana
(USI) he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the School of
Communication of Tsinghua and Peking Universities. He is a member of
the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (Giga-Net) and
serves on the international editorial board of the Palgrave Series in Asia
and Pacific Studies. His research focuses on Chinese media history and
Chinese internet governance.
xiv Notes on Contributors
Alberto Pena-Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the

University of Vigo. He has been FLAD/Brown Michael Teague Visiting
Professor at Brown University and Endowed Chair Professor at the
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, as well as visiting scholar at
Harvard University and University of California Berkeley. Currently, he is
the director of the History Section of the Spanish Association of Research
Communication (AE-IC). His main lines of research focus on the history
of media and propaganda. Among other journals, Alberto has published
articles in Media History, Journal of Iberian & Latin American Research
and Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.
Doreen Reifegerste Dr, is Professor for Health Communication at the
School of Public Health at the Bielefeld University, Germany. She is edi-
tor-in-chief of the European Journal of Health Communication (EJHC),
chair of the temporary working group on health communication of the
European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA)
and chair of the Health Communication division within the German
Communication Association (DGPuK). Doreen has recently published
her research in journals like the Journal of Public Health and the Journal
of Health Communication.
Nelson Ribeiro is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the
Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon where he is the dean of the
School of Human Sciences. Member of the board at the Research Center
for Communication and Culture, he coordinates the research group
“Media Narratives and Collective Memory” and the PhD programme in
Communication Studies. His main research interests are media and com-
munication history, transnational broadcasting and political economy of
the media. Since 2016 he is the chair of the History Section at
IAMCR. Nelson has published his research in journals like Journalism
Studies, The International Journal of Press/Politics and Media History.
Christian Schwarzenegger Dr, is a researcher and lecturer (Akademischer
Rat) in the Department of Media, Knowledge and Communication at the
University of Augsburg, Germany, and a former visiting professor at the
University of Salzburg, Austria. Since 2016 he is the vice-chair of the
ECREA Communication History Section and vice-chair and since 2020
chair of the Communication History Division of the German
Communication Association, DGPuK. His main research interests include
communication history, especially of digital media, media and memory
Notes on Contributors xv
and alternative media. Christian has recently published his research in

journals like New Media and Society, Digital Journalism and Convergence.
Rachel Somerstein is Associate Professor of Journalism at the State
University of New York in New Paltz, New York. Her main areas of focus
are photojournalism, collective memory and photojournalistic practice.
Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Journalism Practice,
Journalism and Feminist Media Studies, among other publications. She
holds a PhD from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public
Communications.
Anna Wagner Dr, is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Public
Health at the Bielefeld University in Germany. She is a representative of
early career researchers in the health communication division within the
German Communication Association (DGPuK). Her main research inter-
ests include health communication, interpersonal communication and
entertainment research. Anna has published her work in journals like
Social Media + Society, Journalism Studies and the Journal of Health
Communication.
List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 Holocaust and Nakba interconnected through the war of

independence. (Aleida Assmann, Formen des Vergessens.
Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017, 162) 131
Fig. 12.1 The Internet Society appeals to boycott online rumours and
calls for a civilized Internet (Guoqing, “China Internet
Association calls for: resisting online rumors and running the
Internet civilizedly according to law,” Last modified April 9,
2012, http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2012-04/09/
content_25094103.htm)258
Fig. 12.2 Internet online rumours are “malignant rumours” (Guoquing,
“Online rumors are ‘poisonous tumors’,” Last modified April
9, 2012, http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2012-04/09/
content_25095194.htm)259
Fig. 12.3 Internet rumours—People’s Daily Comment: fabricating and
spreading rumours must be punished according to the law
(Guoquing, “Online rumors,” Last modified April 1, 2012,
http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2012-04/01/
content_25044828_4.htm)260
Fig. 12.4 Be cautious on those rumours posted on WeChat [by warm
people] (Piyao, “Beware of those warm rumors on WeChat,”
Last modified August 11, 2018, http://www.piyao.org.
cn/2018-11/08/c_129988562.htm) 261
Fig. 12.5 The good practice of detecting scientific rumours (Piyao,
“‘Science popularization style refutes rumors’ is a good way to
do it,” Last modified February 2, 2019, http://www.piyao.
org.cn/2019-01/02/c_1210028419.htm) 262
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 12.6 The ones who fabricated rumours on the “sex assault”
incident apologized and detained (Piyao, “The rumormonger
of the ‘sexual assault’ incident apologized and was detained.
What is the responsibility for spreading rumors?” Last
modified July 1, 2019, http://www.piyao.org.
cn/2019-07/01/c_ 1210174004.htm) 263
Fig. 12.7 Don’t believe the rumours. We became wise fighting the
epidemic (Piyao, “Don’t believe rumors. Max we become wise
people in the fight against the epidemic,” Last modified July
1, 2020, http://www.piyao.org.cn/2020-07/01/
c_1210684511.htm)264
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic,

Intermedia, and Transcultural Perspectives
on a Toxic and Functional Relationship
during Pandemics, Wars, and Political Crises
Nelson Ribeiro and Christian Schwarzenegger
The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most recent illustrations
of how the media play a central role in the dissemination of fear in times
of crisis and uncertainty. Even though fear is frequently presented as an
emotion that can lead to the adoption of behaviors that appear to be irra-
tional,1 the current pandemic has demonstrated that governments and
other social actors rely on the mediation of fear to increase citizens’
perception of threat and motivate them to act responsibly. Despite being
N. Ribeiro (*)
School of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: nelson.ribeiro@ucp.pt
C. Schwarzenegger
Department of Media, Knowledge and Communication,
University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
e-mail: christian.schwarzenegger@phil.uni-augsburg.de
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
N. Ribeiro, C. Schwarzenegger (eds.), Media and the Dissemination
of Fear, Global Transformations in Media and Communication
Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84989-4_1
2 N. RIBEIRO AND C. SCHWARZENEGGER
two distinct concepts—fear is an emotion and threat a cognitive process—

there is an imbricated relationship between the two2 that needs to be taken
into account if one aims to understand the mechanisms of persuasion that
are particularly relevant in the context of crisis and conflict. A high sense
of threat produces fear that can trigger people’s willingness to accept
extreme measures or behaviors otherwise considered inadmissible, thus
molding one’s perception of reality.
During health crises, but also at times of war and during other disasters,
the promotion of fear via the media is considered not only an admissible
but also a necessary practice to foster citizens’ adherence to behaviors that
may help keep them safe, either if this means wearing a mask to prevent a
viral infection, abandoning a village or a city before it is hit by a typhoon,
or seeking refuge during air strikes. But while in these contexts the pro-
motion of fear is perceived as vital to better defend the interests of citizens
and society overall, in other situations steering fear is regarded as an action
deployed by political and social actors that aim to increase their own
power. In ancient Egypt the Pharaohs commissioned paintings depicting
the savage treatment given to their enemies, thus threatening those who
might possibly dare to engage in acts of defiance.3 This is a powerful pro-
paganda technique that is far from being abandoned. In contemporary
times authoritarian states, but also drug cartels and other criminal organi-
zations, whose power is grounded on fear, threat, and compliance, also
resort to media and different technologies to ensure that they are per-
ceived as fierce. By resorting to intimidation, state and non-state actors
aim to disturb their enemies and/or limit their capacity of resistance. In
the first decades of the twenty-first century, both Al Qaeda and ISIS
deployed terrorist attacks that gave them access to the media, allowing
them to spread a sense of fear among large segments of Western and
Middle Eastern populations in an attempt to destabilize the countries they
had identified as their opponents.4
Despite the existence of political and social actors that present them-
selves as a threat to others, most frequently fear is not generated by the
people or groups themselves but by agents who aim to present the ‘other’
as someone who represents a risk to society. The fear of others is recur-
rently promoted by actors who aim to establish or increase their own
power by creating the perception that individual and collective problems
are the consequence of the actions of minorities that are thus presented as
a threat and danger to the community. The persecution of the Jews in
Nazi Germany, but also during the Bolshevik Revolution, is an obvious
1 INTRODUCTION: MEDIA AND FEAR—DIACHRONIC, INTERMEDIA… 3
example of this, while in contemporary times migrants are presented as a

threat due to their supposed goal of inducing profound changes in social
practices and cultural values in Western countries. For audiences who are
exposed to these messages, fear of others is accompanied by insecurity that
increases people’s willingness “to sacrifice others in the name of greater
security”.5
Political and social actors who engage in the promotion of fear resort
to distinct communication technologies, privileging new media whose
processes are less known by society in a specific time—either radio and film
in the 1930s and 1940s or social media and instant messaging platforms in
the early twenty-first century. The newness of media can go hand in hand
with increased fascination for the new means and a lack of resilience to its
suggestions. So, while print media assumed a central role in the mediation
of fear during the Great War, broadcasting became the main medium used
for the dissemination of fear from the 1930s until the end of the twentieth
century, just like digital media acquired a crucial role in this process in the
last two decades. However, far from being a process that relies on one
medium, the promotion of collective fear usually involves a multi- and
transmedia communication strategy. That strategy is designed to increase
impact among audiences and achieve its objective of leading people to act
and/or to perceive reality as intended by those who are committed to
induce fear as part of a persuasion or propaganda strategy.
Even though the distinction between the concepts of propaganda and
persuasion is far from being settled, Garth S. Jowett and Victoria
O’Donnell6 have suggested the two can be differentiated by taking into
account the intent of those who create the message. While propaganda’s
ultimate goal is to “achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of
the propagandist”,7 persuasion aims to impact people’s perception of real-
ity in a way that will not only benefit the sender but also those who actu-
ally receive the message. Following this line of thought, mediated messages
of fear that urge people to adopt sanitary measures in order not to spread
a disease qualify as persuasion while messages that steer fear against
migrants grounded on baseless claims shall be regarded as propaganda.
However, what makes this distinction tricky is that propagandists will also
typically claim that they have the greater and common good of the bene-
factors of their policies in mind. The line will often have to be drawn based
on normative assumptions and from case to case.
As the essays in this volume illustrate, the promotion of fear through
the media has been a prevalent process throughout the twentieth century
and early twenty-first century; a period during which public communica-

tion has continuously been reconfigured through the emergence of differ-
ent media and the increase of speed in the circulation of information.
While technologies have allowed messages to spread faster, political actors
have used these to disseminate the idea that societies are under threat by
powerful enemies that need to be stopped. This has been a recurrent com-
munication strategy used during war periods, in which states promote fear
and hate against their enemies, frequently resorting to atrocity propa-
ganda. However, disseminating fear and stimulating hate against the
‘other’, either a nation or a specific group of people, is far from being a
practice used exclusively during wartime. On the contrary, fear has been
part of the political rhetoric which has fueled political movements, from
National Socialism in Nazi Germany to discourses around contemporary
populist movements and leaders such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro,
Victor Orbán, and Rodrigo Duterte, just to mention a few leaders who
established populist movements in the 2010s.
In contemporary times discourses that breed fear are part of what Ruth
Wodak8 has labelled as the “normalization of shameless politics” grounded
on nationalism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and constant attacks on
minorities and migrants. In the UK, the 2016 Leave Campaign for the UK
to leave the European Union relied mostly on anti-immigration rhetoric
and “the fear and anger associated with migration”9 which can also be
found in many other political discourses across Europe10 and beyond. In
the United States, the attack on the Capitol Hill in January 2021 was the
result of a discourse of falsehood based on a supposed plot set to steal the
election from Donald Trump. However, the riot was also the consequence
of a belligerent discourse that had become prevalent in American politics
and that normalized the idea that political opponents, instead of being
participants in the democratic process, are enemies that represent a threat
to the country. At least some of the culprits may have thus been motivated
by actual fear for their country, believing that they were safeguarding its
democracy while in fact they were putting it in jeopardy.
Researching the Mediation of Fear

Due to the significance acquired by the dissemination of collective fear in
the context of wars, crises, and political struggles, an important body of
research has focused on messages produced by political actors intended to
induce fear, and how these have been used to mobilize society against
specific enemies.11 Propaganda campaigns that steered fear were abundant

during the twentieth century and in the last few decades, with countries
designing messages not only to discredit their enemies but also to present
them as amoral and barbarians who threaten civilization. While atrocity
propaganda has been well documented in the literature dealing with mili-
tary conflicts between the Great War and the Cold War,12 in other military
conflicts and political struggles it was also used to stir support for a pleth-
ora of activities aimed at countering or to annihilate enemies.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq, intended to overthrow Saddam Hussein,
was justified by the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, while in
1991, the public support for the military intervention in the Gulf War was
fueled by the story that Iraqi soldiers had taken 312 babies from their
incubators and placed them on to the floor of hospitals where they were
left to die. The main source of this story was a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl,
who was identified later on as the daughter of the Ambassador of Kuwait
to the United States.13 Neither of these stories held true, but due to their
emotional appeal, they helped steer public opinion in favor of the wars so
that those who threatened basic human rights could be stopped. These
false accounts demonstrate the importance that disinformation acquires in
campaigns conceived to present ‘others’ as a threat. While international
public opinion was mobilized in this last case to support the Western coali-
tion that was supposedly stopping the killing of babies in Kuwait, in other
contexts people are led to believe that the ‘others’ who live next to them
are a threat and thus deserve not be considered as citizens with rights but
should instead be placed under surveillance in order to limit their capacity
to inflict pain on society.
During most of the twentieth century, research on the mediation of
collective fear placed a special focus on messages produced by countries to
steer fear toward foreign nations. However, in recent decades the phe-
nomenon has been discussed from different perspectives, with the emer-
gence of new research angles. One of the most dominant has looked into
the connection between the expansion of commercial media and how fear
and threat penetrate the social fabric. For David Altheide,14 the discourse
of fear has become prevalent in the public sphere as part of ‘media logic’,
that is, the routine processes through which the media transmit informa-
tion.15 Because the media favor conflict and sensation when describing and
reporting reality, fear becomes a key ingredient used to frame news stories
and entertaining popular culture, thus impacting citizens perceptions and
how they attribute symbolic meaning to events and social actors. In the
aftermath of the 9/11 attack, terrorism was framed as a continuous threat,

which led people to overestimate the risk of becoming victims of future
attacks.16 This ultimately contributed to citizens’ support of policies
designed to tackle what they believed to be one of the biggest threats to
society.
Terrorist organizations have also used the ‘media logic’ to their favor by
perpetrating attacks against civilians that are highly mediatized, thus con-
tributing to their affirmation as powerful organizations that have the
capacity to inflict pain and suffering. In the first decades of the twenty-first
century, Al-Qaeda and ISIS were two of the most notorious terrorist
groups that managed to spread fear by their capacity to execute large-scale
attacks that were given intense media coverage. To ensure their threats
were not forgotten by the public, both produced videos that were sent to
television stations and/or shared online. Two of the most infamous exam-
ples were Bin Laden’s messages sent to Al Jazeera, and then broadcast in
many other television stations worldwide, and ISIS’s videos of the behead-
ing of Western citizens.
Even though the creation of a high-level sense of threat and risk is a
function that has been attributed to the media throughout most of the
twentieth century, and in different political settings, Zygmunt Baumam
has argued that collective uncertainty, insecurity, and fear are characteris-
tics of ‘liquid modernity’.17 At a time during which traditional institutions
are met with a sense of disbelief and thus have collapsed in their capacity
to represent society, fear has become an emotion used by politicians to
foster the support of their fellow citizens. To some degree fear is the only
constant available in times when everything else is volatile and uncertain.
In liquid modernity—and certainly in populist discourses—there is the
specter that “we are all dangers to each other” and that only three roles are
available to be played: “perpetrators, victims and collateral casualties”.18
A central phenomenon since the first political organized societies, today
the dissemination of collective fear is boosted by new platforms that allow
content to circulate at a higher speed, also enabling the participation of
anonymous citizens. Throughout the twentieth century the most notori-
ous campaigns intended to mold people’s perception of threat and risk
were designed by political actors and institutions that relied on mass media
but also on interpersonal communication among peers to increase the
effects. This scenario has not been erased in the digital age. Even though
we do live in what has been labelled as a participatory culture,19 for many
citizens participating means sharing online messages from sources that are
not checked beforehand.20 Thus, even though the media continue to play
a central role in soliciting and amplifying fear in the digital environment,
anonymous citizens also participate in this process, allowing it to be used
for the advantage of many political and social actors engaged in molding
people’s perceptions and distorting their sense of threat.
Book Overview
This volume offers a collection of essays that deal with the role played by
different media in fear dissemination. Like the media employed and the
contexts addressed, the types of fears invoked also vary according to the
contributions. The chapters track the discourse of fear across different
political and social settings and roughly across the last one hundred years,
from the Great War to the COVID-19 pandemic, shedding light on pat-
terns of dissemination and demonstrating how different media have been
called to promote fear and increase the perception of threat by both state
and non-state actors. While some essays focus on one specific medium,
offering an in-depth analysis of how the particular characteristics of print
media or broadcasting were exploited in order to induce fear among audi-
ences, others take a multi- and transmedia approach discussing the effec-
tiveness of campaigns that explore the characteristics of different media,
from film to online social networks. All approach the media as an infra-
structural basis for experiencing and understanding reality,21 demonstrat-
ing their centrality in how individuals make sense of everyday life and how
they perceive risks and threats.
Besides sharing the same approach to the media, the chapters all cast
light on how the dissemination of fear has been a prevalent phenomenon
in different historical moments, transversal to different political regimes
and fueled by the need to emphasize and exploit the alleged dreadfulness
of the other, to demonstrate the righteousness of their own cause and gain
support, as well as to legitimize measures to counter the fear and its source.
Understanding the role and the consequences of the usage of the media to
promote fear and hate in different historical settings will allow for a better
comprehension of contemporary media and their role in the social con-
struction of ‘the enemy’. At a time when discourses about protecting ‘our
world’ from being disturbed by the ‘other’ resonate ideas promoted by
populist movements of the past, it is important to better understand the
intertwined relationship between media and fear and how this relationship
has been cultivated by political actors over time and in particular settings.
The historical, global, and transnational dimension of the chapters

allows for comparison of the strategies for the weaponization of dread and
terror, as forms of propaganda and eliciting fear but also counter-
communicative measures. This volume identifies the transformation and
continuity in creating and amplifying fear in strategic communication con-
texts and for a variety of purposes across the globe, involving transitions in
political contexts, changes in media environments, and parties engaged in
conflict or crisis. The comparison of periods of war and pandemics with
other conflicts and crises allows commonalities and differences to be iden-
tified, given different levels of escalation in political or armed conflicts.
The book is organized in three main parts. The first part, Disseminating
and Mitigating Fear during Pandemics and Disasters, addresses the role of
media in times of health crises, natural disasters, and other catastrophes.
The second chapter of this volume by Anna Wagner and Doreen Reifegerste
covers an impressive time span and discusses the mediated dissemination
of fear in pandemic times, reaching from the Black Death to our current
COVID-19 situation. The authors show that media have been vital for the
perception of threat and precautions taken even before the time of mass
media. Based on historical and contemporary examples, they further dem-
onstrate how in different phases of a pandemic the mediation of fear serves
different purposes: from raising awareness of threats to mitigating fear and
providing knowledge about ways of infection and preventive measures
which can be taken to prevent over-fear and unwarranted panic. Yet media
have also been responsible for over-fear and served as agents of political
instrumentalization and conspiracy theories during a pandemic. The
authors conclude that in order to cope with fear we must live with fear.
Ouzi Elyada showcases that fear has long since been established as a fuel
for the prospering of media in the attention economy, but that economic
interests besides political goals have been pursued. Using the Hebrew
press in early twentieth-century Palestine as a case, Elyada lucidly describes
the workings of how the popular press exploited catastrophes and disasters
for economic gain. By reporting in Hebrew language it also instrumental-
ized the fear induced in the stories, to attract an audience for the everyday
use of a tongue which was not commonly used but considered a para-
mount vessel for Zionist goals. Together, the two chapters show that the
dissemination of fear in the media can have intentions beyond the obvi-
ous, that the nature and state of fear can vary broadly and that even in the
same context, for example, of a pandemic, the fears which are being
invoked, catered to, or countered may vary.
The second part of this book, Spreading Fear Across Borders: Journalism
and Alternative Media, assembles five chapters which deal with the dis-
semination of fear in both journalism and alternative media and alternative
public arenas over a significant time span. All chapters deal with journalis-
tic reporting or alternative media coverage and engagement with wars,
crisis, and conflict, with a focus on non-governmental actors. These chap-
ters do not address how wars and conflicts were constructed through fear
by state agents, but on different levels and various settings they address
how media were used for coping with fear, dismantling fear, or steering
peace. Opening the section, Susanne Kinnebrock discusses the fear-related
public relations efforts by pacifist activists within the international feminist
movement during World War I. Not only did these activists address the
horrors and fearsome perils of war in their communication, but Kinnebrock
shows that by doing so, the pacifists also induced fear among belligerent
authorities and military administration: if war was seen as something to be
feared rather than welcomed and aspired to as a solution, the morale of the
troops could suffer. Pacifists and military were hence bound together by a
fear-relation, that is, different forms of fear feeding into one another.
Switching wars, Christian Schwarzenegger and Gabriele Falböck show
how during World War II, Austrian refugees in the United States made use
of alternative media to provide support against the menace of everyday life
in an unknown and oftentimes strange environment. Based on the case of
the Exile newspaper, Austro American Tribune (AAT), they illustrate how
the medium served to disseminate fear of the atrocious Germans to depict
themselves as allies with a common enemy; cultivating the fear of the
Germans as barbaric ‘others’ was instrumental to signal to the United
States that the Austrians did not pose a threat. Furthermore, highlighting
the difference between Austrians and Germans also helped to maintain a
sense of us while in exile and while the heimat was far off. The authors also
show another face of fear relevant in this case: as many of the refugees
involved with the AAT had ties to communism and socialism, they would
eventually find themselves as suspected of participating in Anti-American
activities and perceived as a threat. Also, Gideon Kouts deals with a per-
spective on the atrocities of the Nazi regime from abroad: Kouts argues
that the Palestinian Jewish establishment (the Yishouv) and its press under-
reacted to the first news about the Holocaust of European Jews. The reac-
tions of the Hebrew press were first characterized by disbelief and
complacency in the ‘Face of Evil’; the reports were hence found to be
rather hidden than prominently exposed, the newspapers feared sharing
the full amount of terror with their readers. Kouts shows how editors
resorted to discrediting the credibility of news sources and reports about
the atrocities arriving from Europe than to accept the terrible truth. The
following chapter moves several decades onwards but stays in the Middle
East. Thomas Birkner, Aysha Agbarya, Oren Meyers, and Rachel
Somerstein address the role of the media in the persistently present fear in
the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Starting from the Six Day War in 1967, the
authors argue that current fears are fundamentally rooted in past events.
Combining transnational perspectives on how the 50th anniversary of the
Six Day War was commemorated in 2017 they show how the memory of
past trauma provides the interpretive frames through which the Israeli,
Palestinian American, and German public shape their opinions and feel-
ings toward the conflict and its possible resolution. The section is con-
cluded by Hanan Badr’s chapter on the Arab Uprisings, known as Arab
Spring. In the initial reception of these uprisings, media were addressed as
vessels of hope and new digital technologies, valued for their ability to
connect, inspire, and mobilize, were seen as means of jumpstarting democ-
racy. However, during times of upheaval authoritarian regimes relied on
the dissemination of fear to counteract the public mobilization and dis-
credit social movements who challenged them. Revolt and change are
indicative of a loss of stability and certainty, and fear related to such insta-
bility can be exploited to lessen revolutionary ambitions.
The third part of this volume focuses on cases of State-Sponsored Fear
and Intimidation. The five chapters in this part deal with different histori-
cal conflict and crisis situations from different settings around the globe.
In all instances fear is described as a means of political communication for
propagandistic or persuasive purposes. Alberto Pena takes us to the time
of the Spanish Civil War and describes how the anti-communist fear of the
‘red danger’ was fostered by the Portuguese regime of Salazar to suppress
domestic opposition. Fear in this case was an important means of agitation
and anti-communist mobilization fostered by the regime to repress domes-
tic opposition, whereas its propaganda cynically contrasted the Spanish
conflagration to the Portuguese ‘haven of peace’. A crucial means for the
dissemination of the fear of the red terror was the Radio, as its innovative
way of communicating through the airwaves allowed for immediacy and
emotionality making it an essential channel for psychological warfare as a
kind of ‘airwaves artillery’. With Nelson Ribeiro’s contribution we stay on
the Iberian Peninsula and continue to focus on the airwaves but switch
back again to the time of World War II. Whereas in the previous chapter
domestic radio broadcasting was a key feature in the dissemination of fear,

Ribeiro discusses transnational fear dissemination, as he focuses on Nazi
propaganda, including radio broadcasts that reached Portugal via short-
wave. He demonstrates how the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG)
adapted its messages to the Portuguese audience, paying particular atten-
tion to the country’s colonial possessions that were said to be under threat
from the Americans and the British. To invoke fear, the chapter shows
how something important and held dear must be depicted as under threat.
Ribeiro shows how credible alternative sources were needed and employed
by other services to counter the Nazi dissemination of fear, showing that
credibility and trust are imperative tools in countering disinformation. As
in previous chapters, also Paul Haridakis shows that promoting fear of an
outside threat typically is associated with highlighting how the existing
lifestyle and culture would be in peril in case the others gained influence
or the existing camp would be subdued in a conflict. Haridakis’ case is the
fear of communism in the twentieth-century United States with particular
emphasis on the period of the Vietnam War. As already briefly touched
upon in the chapter by Schwarzenegger and Falböck, the US government
and media-promulgated fear of communism in the United States and the
prevalent media trope of the communist menace drove the perceived need
to thwart the spread of communism around the world. Multiple genera-
tions of Americans were indoctrinated with anti-communist sentiment
through a variety of media—including movies, television, and government-
sponsored propaganda channels. As the majority of Americans had no
direct contact with communism, the communist and also socialist menace
as they were portrayed in the media can still be activated to pursue political
goals today. Using fear and intimidation as a means of political control and
to contain disobedient behavior can be followed through the ages, across
regional contexts and also across various media. Also fear as a governing
principle can be found during wars, in the preface and aftermath of armed
or civil conflicts as well as during times of peace. Gianluigi Negro demon-
strates the latter case in his chapter on what is called online rumors in the
Chinese context. Negro provides a historical overview on the history of
so-called online rumors on the Chinese Internet and discusses similarities
and differences between these phenomena and fake news in the United
States and European digital realm. He then focuses on campaigns by tra-
ditional media, government agencies, and purported grassroots move-
ments all fueling a metanarrative of fear against what is considered
‘improper online behavior’. The volume is concluded by David Altheide,
a doyen in the research into the relationship between media and fear. In
‘Media Logic, Terrorism, and the Politics of Fear’ he departs from his own
seminal works to comment on current developments in the United States
and in Europe. He argues that our understanding of media logic and
mediatization helps clarify how fear-based propaganda is increasingly
joined with entertainment formats to manipulate public opinion and rein-
force fear, while promising to restore ‘law and order’. Altheide argues that
the United States and other countries are increasingly vulnerable to appeals
of nationalism and protectionism in the face of terrorist threats and fear
appeals against enemies from the outside and from within. The challenge
is, he concludes, to not sacrifice civil liberties, freedom, empathy, and
humanity to efforts to protect, control, and frighten.
Today the media remain a battlefield used by political agents and social
movements to spread and counter fear, aiming to impact on people’s per-
ception of reality and their sense of urgency. Steering fear remains a central
strategy of those who aim to influence citizens’ behavior. Thus, it needs to
be taken into consideration when analyzing the discourses of political and
social actors that struggle to gain support for different ideas and causes
that may well aim to benefit society at large or specific groups through the
promotion of the exclusion of ‘others’. Fear is not a stable or definite cat-
egory nor concept, as the cases in this volume show. The different sections
of this book and the chapters within often have different ideas of who to
fear and what to fear for at their core. Some cases also show that fear in the
same scenario can mean very different things to the different parties and
actors involved. Also, during different phases of a pandemic, crisis, or con-
flict, what is to be feared by whom and why and how the media relate to
these phases and faces of fear can be in flux.
Due to its diachronic perspective, this book demonstrates that both
weaponizing and downplaying fear have been used as central communica-
tion strategies to guide public opinion. As an emotion that impacts on our
sense of threat, it has served as a powerful weapon in times of pandemics,
wars, and other crises but it is also a central element used by social and
political actors and organizations whose own existence is grounded on
their capacity to steer fear of themselves or of others. Furthermore, besides
serving as channels for the dissemination of fear promoted by different
agents, the media also use fear—and the sense of threat associated—to
attract audiences and ensure their own relevance in the media ecosystem.
The role of media in the dissemination of fear—as the chapters show—is
diverse: different media in different eras have been found to carry the
poison as well as the antidote to fear. Media can be complicit with fear-
mongering, but also discharge fear discourses or simply go on as benefac-
tors of fear and terror and the persistent fascination it holds. The articles
in this volume cover a period of over a century, but strikingly unravel how
the mechanisms of how fear is invoked, spread, or countered, in and
through the media, may always be linked to cultural and political contexts
in a given period. These mechanisms have remained surprisingly persistent
over the ages and across geographical areas and despite the transforma-
tions of the media available. This volume shows that media and fear can
sometimes be highly functional and beneficial, sometimes disastrous and
toxic, but it is always and certainly an ongoing relationship.
Notes
1. Olivier Chanel and Graciela Chichilnisky, “The Influence of Fear in
Decisions: Experimental Evidence”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 39
(2009): 271–98.
2. Kim Witte and Mike Allen, “A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeals: Implications
for Effective Public Health Campaigns”, Health Education & Behavior 27,
no. 5 (2000): 591–615.
3. Philip Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient
World to the Nuclear Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).
4. Des Freedman and Daya Thussu, “Introduction: Dynamics of Media and
Terrorism”, in Media and Terrorism: Global Perspectives, ed. Des Freedman
and Daya Thussu (London: Sage, 2012), 1–20.
5. Fiona Jeffries, “Mediating Fear”, Global Media and Communication 9, no.
1 (2012): 42.
6. Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion
(Thousand Oaks and London: Sage, 2015).
7. Jowett and O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 7.
8. Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses
Mean (London: Sage, 2015).
9. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, “Media and the Emotional Politics of Populism”,
in Media and Populism, ed. Nelson Ribeiro and Barbie Zelizer (Lisbon:
CECC), 66.
10. Catherine E. de Vries and Isabell Hoffmann, “Fear Not Values. Public
Opinion and Populist Vote in Europe’ (2016), http://eupinions.eu/de/
text/fear-not-values/.
11. Mark Connelly and David Welch, War and the Media: Reportage and
Propaganda 1900–2003 (London: T.B. Tauris, 2005); Taylor, Munitions of
the Mind.
12. George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1943), https://
www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-
other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/; Nelson Ribeiro, Anne
Schmidt, Sian Nicholas, Olga Kruglikova and Koenraad Du Pont, “World
War I and the Emergence of Modern Propaganda”, in The Handbook of
European Communication History, ed. Klaus Arnold, Pascal Preston and
Susanne Kinnebrock (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2020); Taylor, Munitions
of the Mind.
13. Randal Marlin, Propaganda & the Ethics of Persuasion (Peterborough, ON:
Broadview Press, 2002).
14. David L. Altheide, Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis
(New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 2018).
15. David L. Altheide and Robert P. Snow, Media Logic (Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage, 1979).
16. Fathali M. Moghaddam, Threat to Democracy. The Appeal of
Authoritarianism in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association, 2019).
17. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006).
18. Bauman, Liquid Fear, 98.
19. Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory
Culture (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006).
20. Alicia Wanless and Michael Berk, “The Audience is the Amplifier:
Participatory Propaganda”, in The Sage Handbook of Propaganda, ed. Paul
Baines, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy and Nancy Snow (Los Angeles:
Sage, 2020).
21. Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone Film Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999).
References
Altheide, David L. Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis. New York:
Aldine De Gruyter, 2018.
Altheide, David L., and Robert P. Snow. Media Logic. Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage, 1979.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006.
Chanel, Olivier, and Graciela Chichilnisky. “The Influence of Fear in Decisions:
Experimental Evidence”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 39 (2009): 271–98.
Connelly, Mark, and David Welch. War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda
1900–2003. London: T.B. Tauris, 2005.
Freedman, Des, and Daya Thussu. “Introduction: Dynamics of Media and
Terrorism”, in Media and Terrorism: Global Perspectives, ed. Des Freedman and
Daya Thussu. London: Sage, 2012.
Jeffries, Fiona. “Mediating Fear”, Global Media and Communication 9, no. 1

(2012): 37–52.
Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.
New York and London: New York University Press, 2006.
Jowett, Garth, and Victoria O’Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. Thousand
Oaks and London: Sage, 2015.
Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone Film Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1999.
Marlin, Randal. Propaganda & the Ethics of Persuasion. Peterborough, ON:
Broadview Press, 2002.
Moghaddam, Fathali M. Threat to Democracy. The Appeal of Authoritarianism in
an Age of Uncertainty. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association, 2019.
Orwell, George. “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1943), https://www.
orwellfoundation.com/the-o rwell-f oundation/orwell/essays-a nd-o ther-
works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/
Ribeiro, Nelson, Anne Schmidt, Sian Nicholas, Olga Kruglikova, and Koenraad
Du Pont. “World War I and the Emergence of Modern Propaganda”, in The
Handbook of European Communication History, ed. Klaus Arnold, Pascal
Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2020.
Taylor, Philip. Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to
the Nuclear Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.
de Vries, Catherine E., and Isabell Hoffmann. “Fear Not Values. Public Opinion
and Populist Vote in Europe” (2016), http://eupinions.eu/de/text/
fear-not-values/
Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. “Media and the Emotional Politics of Populism”, in Media
and Populism, ed. Nelson Ribeiro and Barbie Zelizer. Lisbon: CECC, 66.
Wanless, Alicia, and Michael Berk. “The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory
Propaganda”, in The Sage Handbook of Propaganda, ed. Paul Baines, Nicholas
O’Shaughnessy, and Nancy Snow. Los Angeles: Sage, 2020.
Witte, Kim, and Mike Allen. “A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeals: Implications for
Effective Public Health Campaigns”, Health Education & Behavior 27, no. 5
(2000): 591–615.
Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean.
London: Sage, 2015.
PART I
Disseminating and Mitigating Fear

During Pandemics and Disasters
CHAPTER 2
From Black Death to COVID-19:

The Mediated Dissemination of Fear
in Pandemic Times
Anna Wagner and Doreen Reifegerste
The Role of Fear in Pandemic Times

“Coping with fear in the face of a pandemic: Five steps to take when you
start to worry.” The title of this article from Psychology Today posted on the
magazine’s website in March 2020 is just one of a plethora of voices link-
ing a pandemic to the very basic human emotion of fear—and giving
advice on how to cope with it. Fear, as this example demonstrates, is a
natural companion of a pandemic.
This comes as no surprise, because a pandemic is per definition an
event, which rather suddenly and uncontrollably endangers the health and
lives of millions of people across countries, as it describes the spread of
severe or fatal infectious diseases over large geographic areas.1 This
A. Wagner (*) • D. Reifegerste

Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
e-mail: anna.wagner@uni-bielefeld.de; doreen.reifegerste@uni-bielefeld.de
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Switzerland AG 2022
N. Ribeiro, C. Schwarzenegger (eds.), Media and the Dissemination
of Fear, Global Transformations in Media and Communication
Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84989-4_2
20 A. WAGNER AND D. REIFEGERSTE
definition covers global pandemics like the Black Death that occurred
regularly in Europe in the Middle Ages and killed about 50 million people
or 30% to 50% of the European population2 or COVID-19 that has so far
affected approximately 95 million people around the globe and cost more
than two million lives (status: beginning of January 20213). But also
Cholera (being most dangerous in the nineteenth century with 1.5 million
victims), the Spanish Flu at the beginning of the twentieth century with at
least 50 million deaths4 as well as Ebola, SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome), MERS or Swine Flu at the end of the twentieth century rep-
resent historical challenges to society, which fear was an essential part of.5
The role of fear in a pandemic situation is and always has been an
ambivalent one, as we will outline in this chapter. In pandemic times, a
certain level of fear is crucial for risk awareness, can promote adaptive
action in individuals and societies as a whole, and thus helps to prevent a
disease from spreading.6 But it might also paralyze, hinder action, and
even be instrumentalized for radical, counterproductive causes.
Throughout the history of pandemics, media have played a special role in
both the dissemination and mitigation of fear. As “principal sources of
information for the public”7 they can contribute to disseminating or con-
taining fear and trigger adaptive or maladaptive consequences. This holds
true for pandemics in various historical epochs, since patterns of fear and
related phenomena are surprisingly consistent over time.
On an individual level, fear has two aspects within information pro-
cesses, which are most relevant for the understanding of its role in pan-
demic times. Firstly, fear is an emotion and thus neither objective nor
correlated to epidemiological numbers of diseases or the objective health
threat. This means that our subjective risk perceptions are most often very
biased. While we tend to overrate novel, deathly, or exotic threats like
pandemics, terrorist attacks, or other extreme events, we are likely to
underestimate familiar risks in our daily lives such as the flu.8 This overes-
timation of novel threats is often promoted by the high uncertainty about
its causes and treatment strategies, whereas the known risks trigger a false
sense of control, because we also know about the measures for prevention
and cure (without necessarily applying them). Naturally, uncertainty
changes over the trajectory of a pandemic. While uncertainty is very high
at the onset and once people are aware of the risk, it reduces when knowl-
edge about the disease increases.9 Secondly, the subjective perception of
fear and the knowledge about measures to prevent the risks can occur in
three different routes, which lead to three different outcomes. According
2 FROM BLACK DEATH TO COVID-19: THE MEDIATED DISSEMINATION… 21
to the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM),10 a very low level of fear
will most likely lead to the (1) ignorance of the risks or thus to non-
committence to protection measures. If the severity of and susceptibility
to the risks are perceived as high, the fear reaction depends on the indi-
viduals’ perception of control. If individuals think they are competent to
control the danger by protection measures they are more likely to do the
(2) adaptive change. Otherwise, they are likely to take steps to control
their fear instead. This might result in (3) maladaptive behavior change like
fatalism, panic, or denialism.
As countermeasures against a pandemic depend on both individual and
collective actions, successful communication is key to containing a glob-
ally spreading disease.11 Consequently, the challenge for governments in
pandemic times is to keep fear in balance when “explaining risk and telling
people how to act without also seeding alarm.”12 Governmental commu-
nication, however, is and has never been the only relevant source of infor-
mation during a pandemic. Throughout history, a variety of information
sources from physicians to health websites have been involved in the dis-
semination of information and potentially in the dissemination—or miti-
gation—of fear. Hence, the objective of this chapter is to examine the
various relations between media and fear in the history of pandemics. By
analyzing the role of media across pandemic situations from the plague to
COVID-19, we aim to identify adaptive and maladaptive patterns of fear
communication and discuss the consequences for the handling of a
pandemic.
Media as Disseminators of Information and Fear

in Pandemic Times
In pandemic times and particularly during the younger pandemics such as

SARS and COVID-19, various media constitute the main sources of infor-
mation for most people.13 For example, during the first wave of the Corona
crisis from March to June 2020 the majority of the population in Germany
searched for Corona-related information daily in mass media.14 Especially
in times of a public health crisis with high uncertainty, media are most
relevant information providers where most people (even political decision
makers) do not have a primary source of information and thus rely on
coverage by journalists.15 Thus, media have a special responsibility in the
distribution of health information and a particular societal influence.16 In
historic contexts, media encompass a great variety of communicative mea-

sures to distribute health crisis information. They can be considered as (1)
media content, (2) formats, as well as (3) channels that can be involved in
the dissemination and construction of fear.
As media content, media disseminate information about the causes (also
including non-scientific reasons), ways of transmission, prevention strate-
gies (such as quarantine or vaccination), and remedies (such as medica-
tions).17 Sources of such media content of pandemic information are
mostly physicians (as it was primarily the case during the Black Death) or
public health organizations such as the World Health Organization or
other governmental institutions. This type of content is then often
reported on and distributed further. But such content can also be pro-
duced by medical laypersons such as clergy authorities who wrote pest
tracts18 or disseminated media messages on prevention and responses to
suspected cases during Ebola in West Africa.19 However, during a pan-
demic interpersonal communicators, that is, family members, friends,
neighbors, and similar actors, are also relevant information agents. This
was primarily the case in historic times, when media content was not as
easily accessible as today, but interpersonal communication still is relevant
for the transmission and evaluation of the media content.20 Also for infor-
mation about COVID-19, family members and friends were among the
most frequently used sources.21
Fear-related media content can be presented in a number of media for-
mats, that is, there exist various communication strategies for pandemic-
related information. Most prominent are fear appeals, which are messages
containing risk information to intentionally raise risk awareness among the
audience.22 This fear inducement can be done with vivid language, but
also with personal information as in exemplars or narratives, where, for
example, those affected can function as multipliers of fear by reporting
about their own disease or the death of family members.23 Another com-
munication strategy for fear appeals are visual depictions, which have also
been widely used throughout the history of pandemic-related health
information. For example, copper etching, pictures, photos, or wax mou-
lages of victims and/or their wounds have been used to make the severe-
ness of health risks visible.24 Especially the messages depicting remedies or
protection measures (like the use of masks or handwashing rituals) can add
to self-efficacy and thus prevent audiences from an overflow of fear and
panic, but instead guide or nudge them to the targeted prevention
behaviors.25
The media channels used to disseminate pandemic-related information

stretch from books and leaflets in traditional times, mass media like televi-
sion, newspaper, and radio in the twentieth century to Internet and social
media in current times. The described various communicators have used
the channels, whichever were most effective to distribute health crisis
information at the time of the pandemic. Relevant in times of a pandemic
is that all population groups are reached. That means it is important to
also disseminate fear-related information to hard-to-reach population with
low health literacy or older people,26 who might be better reached via
television, for example, with COVID-19 information27 or via religious
leaders in Ebola times.28
However, which information is sought and processed does not only
depend on the respective media channels, formats, and their content, but
also on the audiences, who actively retrieve or avoid information from
media or interpersonal communication. This can also represent their dif-
ferent ways of coping with fear. Thus, information avoidance might repre-
sent a protection from an overload of fear-inducing information.29 In our
contemporary high-choice media environment and with an abundance of
sometimes contradictory information, balanced levels of fear for every
individual seems nearly impossible. Not only because the reaction toward
a threat is highly individual but also because people’s media diets differ a
lot. As more recent studies have shown, the level of fear someone experi-
ences during a pandemic highly depends on the media they use for infor-
mation purposes. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, for instance,
the primary use of social media sources was repeatedly linked to increased
fear levels and even anxiety.30 This can be dysfunctional when it comes to
following the recommended countermeasures.
Media and Adaptive Forms of Fear in Pandemic Times:

Balanced Levels of Fear and Information
Throughout the centuries we have seen that pandemic-related media
communication and a potentially resulting dissemination of fear can be
“functional” to prevent and stop a disease from spreading. This holds
especially true when the upcoming threat and related health consequences
are underestimated, for example, at the very onset of a pandemic.31 In
order to raise risk awareness and promote preventive action in this phase
of a pandemic, but also later, it is thus crucial to incite a certain level of fear
among the general population. The intentional dissemination of fear in

the first phase of a pandemic is hence closely linked to the communication
of basic information on infection risk and paths of infection as well as
effective prevention measures.
In former times, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries but also before, pandemic-related information was often generated
and publicized by physicians. Records show that in the first years after
1347 alone—the year of the outbreak of the Black Death in Europe—
around 25 plague tracts from physicians were published.32 For example, in
1547 during one of the plague waves John Caius who was a fellow of the
Royal College of Physicians published a text with the title A boke or coun-
seill against the disease commonly called the sweate or sweatyng sicknesse.33
The purpose of this text was to spread information and raise risk awareness
beyond the elitist circles of his fellow physicians.34 Another early example
of such communication is the guidebook Consilium pestis prophylacticum.
Advice or report on what to do and what not to do during the plague (title
translated) by Reinesius, a physician from the German town of Gotha,
which dates back to the year 1625 and was written as general information
on the plague. To cure the internal spoilage of the body Reinesius (1625)
recommended the usual methods of his time, such as cleansing of the
body through regurgitation or bloodletting.35
While both the medical knowledge and the available sources of infor-
mation were limited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries compared
to today, we can still find similar patterns of communication during more
recent pandemics. Nowadays, this type of communication often consists
of communication campaigns initiated by the government but is also
found in mass media coverage during pandemics. For instance, at the
onset of the H1N1 pandemic known as the Swine Flu, the UK govern-
ment sent out information leaflets in May 2009 discussing the nature of
the disease, which governmental actions had been taken as well as preven-
tive measures for every individual (Rubin et al. 2009). In the case of the
H1N1 pandemic, also mass media around the globe were estimated to be
“an ally” as it mostly spread “precise and useful information.”36 Similar to
the Swine Flu, the Hong Kong government implemented a communica-
tion strategy during the SARS pandemic in the year 2002, which included
publicity and preventive education for the general population.37
Be it in the past or in the present, the ultimate goal of these strategies
usually was to disseminate crucial information. In how far health crisis
information are effective, however, not only depends on the form and
content of the disseminated information but also on its potential to incite

fear. As mentioned before, effective means of communication in this
regard have been the use of visual depictions and/or fear appeals. Health-
related visual communication techniques date back to (medical) drawings,
preparations, and wax moulages38 and were implemented in order to illus-
trate the danger and impact of a spreading disease and its potentially seri-
ous health consequences.39 As Chan et al.40 have observed for the
COVID-19 pandemic, strategic visual communication is still a valid means
today: Infographics are a popular means of communication as they are
delivering information at a glance and require a relatively low cognitive
load. Similarly, Chen et al.41 analyzing the social media communication of
the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) during the
COVID-19 pandemic have come to the conclusion “that posts with pic-
tures and videos attached relating to the latest information on the pan-
demic still brings the most citizen engagement.” Whereas information on
a pandemic is essential, it seems it only triggers action if it is apt to also
incite emotions.
So-called fear appeals, which often occur in visual form, have proven to
be an effective tool in communicating health risks such as the risk of con-
tracting a disease as well.42 Fear appeals consist of both an efficacy appeal
to carry out a certain health behavior and a risk appeal emphasizing the
severity of the risk and the vulnerability of the recipient with the aim to
induce fear.43 As the EPPM shows, an adaptive reaction highly depends on
the form and level of fear. Hence, if fear appeals in media are missing or
resulting risk perception levels are too low, the threat of an infection might
be underestimated.44 On the contrary, if the fear induced by risk commu-
nication is too high (which is typically the case when the efficacy appeal is
missing), this can be counterproductive, too. As a study by Slavin,
Batrouney, and Murphy45 suggests for the case of rises in the incidence of
HIV/AIDS in the 2000s, a non-balanced focus on fear can lead to shame
and skepticism about effective treatment.
Particularly with regards to mass media coverage of pandemics, studies
furthermore highlight the effectiveness of framing. For example, Gozzi
et al.46 emphasize the importance of framing and its effects on public per-
ception and individual health behavior during the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic. In the case of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, as one study
shows, the Swedish coverage of the pandemic turned out to be more
effective than the Australian media coverage. This was due to the fact that
media outlets “reported ways viewers could protect their health and
openly admitted the uncertainties”47 whereas the Australian mass media

reported more negatively on the governmental measures, which poten-
tially lead to a higher fear. These examples illustrate that the dissemination
of fear can be adaptive if the right means of communication are chosen
and the fear levels remain balanced. However, fear can also have maladap-
tive consequences for the handling of a pandemic.
Media and Maladaptive Forms of Fear in Pandemic

Times: Overfear, Political Instrumentalization,
and Conspiracy Belief
As the EPPM assumes, fear can be maladaptive and dysfunctional if it is

either too low or too high. As mentioned before, fear commonly is too
low at the onset of a pandemic, which means that the general population
must first be made aware of a risk to avert underestimation of the health
threat. At the same time, a fear too high needs to be hampered too: With
more recent pandemics such as the H1N1 pandemic and COVID-19 fear
is discussed as a psychological burden, which has to be alleviated and
coped with to prevent (further) psychological damage and raise the block-
ade of inactivity, active denial, or counterstrategies.48
Nowadays, maladaptive fear is repeatedly linked to general mass media
and particularly social media. This is reflected for instance in the scientific
article The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19
outbreak published by Depoux et al.49 and similar publications that show
the negative effects of media or media use on fear. As Bendau et al. have
examined for media usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, media con-
sumption per se might increase anxiety and lead to dysfunctional levels of
fear. However, dysfunctional fear contributed by the media is not a new
phenomenon. Historically, as we will outline in the following paragraphs,
dysfunctional fear has been the dark side of pandemic fear and has always
been closely related to the media.
Overfear in pandemic times has both publicly and academically been
associated with certain patterns of media coverage. Communication strat-
egies such as exaggeration and dramatization can contribute to rising fear
levels and lead to maladaptive consequences in the containment of a global
disease, as has for instance been visible in the reporting on the AIDS/HIV
pandemic during the 1980s and 1990s.50 Since mass media coverage often
has a negativity bias and relies on negative news values51 overfear is a likely
outcome of the reporting on a pandemic. This was for instance confirmed

for the case of a spreading of the Ebola disease in West Africa between
2013 and 2016 where hyperbolic media coverage contributed to a climate
of fear, and likely held true for earlier outbreaks. This lead Lu52 to diag-
nose the spreading of “fearbola” in 2015, just as the WHO53 speaks of an
“infodemic” for the case of COVID-19 today. The overexaggeration of a
threat and a potentially resulting overfear is particularly problematic if it
lacks a clear factual basis: This phenomenon is circumscribed with the
term fearmongering or scare mongering and the term “crying wolf”. It
refers to building up a potential threat and disseminating fear although the
risk is much lower than suggested. The media have repeatedly been
accused of scaremongering and crying wolf in the course of the H1N1
pandemic,54 as the extent of the pandemic turned out to be less severe
than predicted and propagated in the media.55 Particularly since pandemic
situations are changing and more knowledge is generated over the course
of a pandemic, however, media reports might only reflect the current state
of knowledge. They might hence only be proven false in the aftermath of
a pandemic or in some cases even remain uncorrected misinformation.
Yet, overemphasizing a threat and propagating fear is not necessarily
something that happens unintentionally. In the case of pandemic influenza
in the early 2000s, Vance describes “the pharmaceutical industry and
influenza researchers, who benefit from the increased expenditures the
publicity provokes”56 as main profiteers and drivers of disseminated fear.
And as we will further delineate below, fear in pandemic times has tradi-
tionally been used and instrumentalized for political and even radical
purposes.
While overfear can have detrimental effects on the containment of a
pandemic, so can denying and silencing an actual or potential fear com-
monly occurring in the face of a global threat. During the SARS pandemic
the local government of the province Guangdong in China controlled
public communication and withheld information on the health threat,
with the result that preventive measures were not taken, the disease fur-
ther spread and ultimately reached Hong Kong in March 2003.57 Instead
of focusing on the balancing of the arising fear it was thus kept at a mini-
mum and turned out to be maladaptive together with the total lack of
political action.
Whereas some governments throughout history have remained politi-
cally motionless in the face of fear during a pandemic, the reverse pattern
has also repeatedly emerged: The multiple fears that are arising in the
course of a pandemic are often instrumentalized politically and serve as a

justification and catalyst for radical political measures. This holds particu-
larly true for xenophobic reasoning and racist purposes from the early
history of pandemics till date. As Devakumar et al. state: “Outbreaks cre-
ate fear, and fear is a key ingredient for racism and xenophobia to thrive.”58
Racist tendencies in the context of pandemics sadly have a long tradition.
A typical pattern of discrimination rooted in fear of infection can be found
in the blaming of a certain people or segment of the population through-
out history. During the medieval plague in Europe, for example, Jews
were accused of causing the pandemic by poisoning wells and food, and
thus served as scapegoats to channel the population’s fear and aggres-
sion.59 This culminated in pogroms against the Jewish people, in the
course of which their properties were stolen, they were attacked and even
murdered by being burnt to death.60
A similar pattern can be found in more recent times during the H1N1
pandemic with Mexicans and other Latinos being scapegoated and stigma-
tized in the US as carriers of the virus.61 Xenophobic responses were also
the case during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and especially in its
initial phase where fear was instrumentalized to discriminate against peo-
ple of Asian descent.62 This is already reflected in the derogatory, xeno-
phobic description of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as the so-called Chinese virus
and resulted in blaming and attacks against Asian people.63 Also other
ethnic groups were discriminated against during the COVID-19 crisis, as
the spreading virus served as an excellent excuse for antimigrant politics
and the closure of borders propagated primarily by right wing populist
parties.64 This observable discrimination against certain social groups and
the political instrumentalization of fear might also be furthered by media
coverage, which seems to focus primarily on the political side of a pan-
demic. A content analysis conducted by Hart, Chinn, and Soroka65 on the
newspaper and network news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the
US for instance showed that the reporting was politicizing the pandemic
in a polarizing way and focused more on politicians and their agendas than
on the scientific background of the situation.
Besides being exploited and instrumentalized by political groups for
their radical causes, fear among the general population also is and was a
source for conspiracy belief. As history shows, fear of a pandemic health
threat is often grounded in rumors, and as the tendency to believe in con-
spiracy theories seems to be higher, the more uncertainty there is about a
pandemic’s causes and its solutions. During a cholera outbreak in 1832,
for example, serious street riots arose in Liverpool directed against medical
doctors, which were grounded in the fear that the physicians had caused
the disease to snatch bodies and experiment on them: “there was a genu-
ine fear in the populace that cholera victims removed to hospital were
likely to be killed by doctors for anatomical dissection.”66 As absurd as this
historic example might seem nowadays, conspiracy theories during a pan-
demic are also prevalent in more recent times. During the Ebola outbreak
in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, for example, rumors circulated
that Western governments had caused the pandemic intentionally in order
to extinct the Congolese people.67 This led to a disbelief in the scientific
explanations and was thus counterproductive to implementing preventive
measures against the disease. Conspiracy beliefs can even result in denying
the existence of a disease or doubting the proven cause of a disease as
Kalichman68 has shown for the case of the AIDS/HIV pandemic in her
book Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human
Tragedy. For the case of the AIDS pandemic, this was most prominently
reflected in the denial of HIV as the cause for AIDS with the virus’ haz-
ardousness being downplayed and negated altogether.
(Modern) media play a particularly important role in the spreading of
conspiracy theories. For once, news coverage can contribute to the dis-
semination and proliferation of these theories if they are reported on, as it
was the case with the Ebola theories in West Africa.69 Further, conspiracy
beliefs are not only disseminated and furthered by politicians but also by
publishing journalists and even scientists increasing public attention for
these rumors, as could be shown for the case of AIDS/HIV.70 Finally, the
use of certain media platforms and contents can contribute to the belief in
conspiracy theories. Nowadays, especially social media and so-called alter-
native media outlets circulating on these platforms are apt to enforce belief
in conspiracy theories. As one study on the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020
has shown, the intensive use of social media platforms and the respective
contents can contribute to believing in conspiracy theories.71 Following
the assumptions of the EPPM (Witte 1992), here the coping with the
emotion of fear might be more important than the cognitive strategies of
evidence-based debunking and counterarguments.72
Conclusion
Fear during a pandemic, as we have argued in this chapter, can amount to
both adaptive and maladaptive consequences: It can contribute to the
containment of a globally spreading disease as it is linked to action but also
hinder preventive measures if it is overdosed or channeled in the wrong
direction. Throughout the history of pandemics, the patterns of fear
occurring during a pandemic have thereby remained quite consistent:
Although the explanations and potential solutions to a pandemic crisis, the
means of communication, and the media environments have changed
drastically over the centuries, we could show that from the Black Plague to
COVID-19 the media have played a similar role and served similar func-
tions in relation to fear. These functions illustrate the ambivalent role
media have played throughout history in the dissemination of fear in pan-
demic times: Media have emerged as constructors and disseminators of
functional and dysfunctional fear, mitigators and instigators of overdosed
fear, silencers and oppressors of legitimate fear as well as platforms for
political instrumentalization and conspiracy theories at the same time.
Along these lines, the functionality of fear highly depends on media and
the way information is disseminated.73 As history teaches us, fear dissemi-
nated by the media is adaptive if it is linked to precise information and
clear recommendations of action. Research shows that successful commu-
nication during a pandemic includes “providing the public with clear, con-
sistent information, which focuses on the practical things that people can
do to reduce their risk.”74 This ideal can conflict with media coverage
often being more oriented toward profit and mass circulation, and thus
relying on strategies of dramatization and emotionalization. Still, from a
strategic communication point of view, for the future (communicative)
handling of a pandemic it is hence crucial to avoid dramatization,75 pre-
vent panic from spreading, and avoid a senseless “production of fear”76 as
an end in itself.
Notes
1. David M. Morens, Gregory K. Folkers, and Anthony S. Fauci, “What Is a
Pandemic?,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 200, no. 7 (2009), https://
doi.org/10.1086/644537.
2. Sharon N. DeWitte, “Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the

Medieval Black Death,” PloS One 9, no. 5 (2014), https://doi.
org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513.
3. World Health Organization, “WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)
Dashboard,” accessed January 21, 2021, https://covid19.who.int/.
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “1918 Pandemic (H1N1
Virus),” accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-
resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html.
5. Stacy Lu, “An Epidemic of Fear,” Monitor on Psychology 46, no. 3 (2015).
6. Craig A. Harper et al., “Functional Fear Predicts Public Health Compliance
in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” International Journal of Mental Health and
Addiction, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00281-5.
7. Nicolò Gozzi et al., “Collective Response to the Media Coverage of
COVID-19 Pandemic on Reddit and Wikipedia,” Journal of Medical
Internet Research 22, no. 10 (2020), https://doi.org/10.2196/21597.
8. Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (London: Earthscan publications, 2000).
9. Sciences Po, “Fear in the Time of Pandemic,” The Conversation, accessed
January 21, 2021, https://www.sciencespo.fr/en/news/news/
fear-in-the-time-of-pandemic/4884.
10. Kim Witte, “Putting the Fear Back into Fear Appeals: The Extended
Parallel Process Model,” Communication Monographs 59 (1992).
11. Gozzi et al., “Collective response to the media coverage of COVID-19
Pandemic on Reddit and Wikipedia.”
12. Lu, “An epidemic of fear,” 46.
13. Carolyn A. Lin and Carolyn Lagoe, “Effects of News Media and
Interpersonal Interactions on H1N1 Risk Perception and Vaccination
Intent,” Communication Research Reports 30, no. 2 (2013), https://doi.
org/10.1080/08824096.2012.762907.
14. Cornelia Betsch et al., “German COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring
(COSMO)—Welle 7 (14.04.2020)” (2020); Christina Viehmann et al.,
“Informationsnutzung in Der Corona-Krise. Report Zu Ersten Befunden
Aus Zwei Erhebungswellen,” https://www.kowi.ifp.uni-mainz.de/
aktuelle-projekte/informationsnutzung-in-der-corona-krise/.
15. Sheena A. Taha et al., “The 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic: The Role of
Threat, Coping, and Media Trust on Vaccination Intentions in Canada,”
Journal of Health Communication 18, no. 3 (2013).
16. Markus Schäfer, “‘Letztendlich Nur Für Auflage?’ Corona Und Die
Verantwortung Der Medien [Ultimately Only for Sales? Corona and the
Responsibility of the Media],” Communicatio Socialis 53, no. 3 (2020),
https://doi.org/10.5771/0010-3497-2020-3-308.
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Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 570, April,
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BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 93, NO. 570,
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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. DLXX. APRIL 1863. Vol. XCIII.

CONTENTS.
Sensation Diplomacy in Japan, 397

Mrs Clifford’s Marriage—Part II., 414
Sir James Graham, 436
The Inexhaustible Capital, 457
Caxtoniana—Part XV., 471
No. XX.—On Self-Control.
No. XXI.—The Modern Misanthrope.
Spedding’s Life of Bacon, 480
The Yeang-tai Mountains, and Spirit-Writing in China, 499
Marriage Bells, 521
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET.
AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. DLXX. APRIL 1863. Vol. XCIII.
SENSATION DIPLOMACY IN JAPAN.[1]

1. ‘The Capital of the Tycoon.’ By Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B. London:
Longmans.
It is one of the most singular features of our institutions that, when
our diplomatic relations with remote and semi-barbarous countries
become so involved that even the Government is at a loss to know
what course to pursue, the public take up the question in a confident
off-hand way; and though, by the force of circumstances, deprived of
the information possessed by the Foreign Office, they do not hesitate
either to denounce or to approve the policy recommended by those
who have studied the subject on the spot, and who alone can be
competent to form an opinion on the matter. It is true that papers
are occasionally laid before Parliament, but what proportion of those
who hold such decided views have read them? In the case of the
Arrow, when people voted for peace or war with China, how many
members of Parliament had informed themselves on the merits of
the question? and what did their constituents know about it? Yet so it
is; the ultimate decision upon all important and complicated
questions of foreign policy necessarily rests with the most ill-
informed class. If they generally decide wrong, we must console
ourselves by the consideration that even free institutions have their
drawbacks, but in compensation have made us so rich and powerful,
that we can always scramble out of any scrape they may get us into.
In countries despotically governed, the merits of a secret diplomacy
are inestimable; but where the Government is responsible, though it
would be difficult to substitute an open system, secret diplomacy is
attended with grave inconveniences, for it becomes impossible to
furnish that public who sit, as it were, in appeal, with the whole facts
of the case upon which they are called to decide. It is then clearly the
interest of the Foreign Office to encourage the dissemination of
accurate political information in a popular form, when the
publication of it does not involve a breach of confidence; and
inasmuch as Blue-Books are not generally considered light or
agreeable reading, and are somewhat inaccessible, the diplomatist
who has a political story to tell, and can do it without betraying State
secrets, is a public benefactor. In these days of official responsibility,
it is not only due to the public but to himself that he should have an
opportunity of stating his case. It may happen that his conduct will
be brought publicly in question and decided upon before he has an
opportunity of laying before the world all the facts. Great injustice is
frequently done to officials serving in distant parts of the world, who
even at last are unable to remove the erroneous impressions formed
upon incorrect or insufficient information. This has been specially
the case in China and the East: a policy based upon an acquaintance
with the local conditions as intimate as it was possible for a foreigner
to obtain, has been upset by a majority of ignorant legislators, who
too often receive their impressions from superficial travellers, or
residents with special interests at stake. It is clear that the opinion of
a merchant is not so likely to be right in diplomatic questions as that
of a trained official, who has passed half his life in studying the
language, institutions, and people of the country to which he has
been accredited; yet when it comes to be a question between the
mercantile community and the minister, the latter is in danger of
going to the wall.
While, on the one hand, the traditions of the Foreign Office are
opposed to what may be termed diplomatic literature—and they dole
out their own information with a somewhat niggard hand—the
British community resident in the East, hampered by no such
restraints, and aided by a scurrilous press, may prejudice the public
mind at home to such an extent that no subsequent defence is of
much avail. We cannot wonder then, if, after five-and-twenty years’
experience of China and Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock should take
the opportunity of giving a full, true, and particular statement of the
political difficulties by which he is surrounded, in anticipation of a
crisis which he sees impending, which no diplomacy will be able to
avert, but in which he will on his return probably find himself
involved.
“By whatever measures,” he remarks, “of a coercive nature, we might seek to

attain this object” (the execution of the Treaty in all its stipulations), “it should be
clearly seen that there is war in the background, more or less near, but tolerably
certain sooner or later to come. During the last two years, whatever a conciliatory
spirit could suggest, with temper, patience, and forbearance in all things, had been
tried. Diplomacy had wellnigh exhausted its resources to induce the Japanese
Government to take a different view of its interests, and to act in accordance with
the spirit of the treaties entered into. Little more remained to be tried in this
direction, nor could much hope be entertained that better success would follow a
longer persistence in the same course.”
The nature of our political relations with Japan is such, that a

history of three years’ diplomacy in that country is not attended with
the inconveniences which would be incidental to a similar narrative
from a European court. Our relations with other friendly nations are
in no way involved, and there can be no objection to such a work as
that now before us, even in a red-tape point of view. Still, we are not
aware of a work of this kind, from the pen of a minister actually at
his post, ever having appeared; and although our author gives us a
most detailed and graphic account of the moral and social state of
Japan, it is the record of his diplomatic relations with the
Government of the Tycoon that we regard as being at once the most
novel and interesting feature of his book.
“I should probably have hesitated,” says Sir Rutherford in his preface, “had it not
seemed important to furnish materials for a right judgment in matters of national
concern connected with Japan, and our relations there, while it might yet be time
to avert, by the intelligent appreciation of our true situation, grievous
disappointment, as well as increased complications and calamities. A free
expression of opinion in matters of public interest is not to be lightly adventured
upon, however, and in many cases those holding office are altogether precluded
from such action. At the same time, much mischief is often done by undue
reticence in matters which must, in a country like ours, be the subject of public
discussion. It so happened that I was relieved from any difficulty on this head by
the publication in extenso of the greater number of my despatches, which were
printed and laid before Parliament. And not only was the necessity for silence
obviated by such publication in this country, but a similar course was followed at
Washington in respect of the despatches of my colleague, the American Minister,
during the same period. As in each of these series there is a very unreserved
expression of opinion as to the political situation of the country, the action of the
Japanese authorities, the views entertained by colleagues, and the conduct of the
foreign communities, the decision of the respective Governments of both countries
to make the despatches public, and this so freely as to leave little of a confidential
character unprinted, effectually removed all the impediments which might
otherwise have existed.”
The general reader must not suppose, however, that because

politics engage a large share of the work before us, he will, on that
account, find it dull. Japan is probably the only country in the world
in which diplomacy becomes a pursuit of thrilling excitement.
Sometimes it leads to some curious discovery, and reveals to us some
part of the political machinery in the government of the country
heretofore unsuspected and unknown. Sometimes it furnishes
amusing illustrations of the Japanese mode of diplomatic fencing; at
others, it involves a frightful tragedy or a quaint official ceremony.
Without these details to illustrate each phase through which our
political relations have passed, we should never have been able to
realise the difficulties with which our officials in those remote
regions have to contend, or the nature of the opposition persistently
offered by the Japanese Government.
The task of permanently installing for the first time a legation in a
city of upwards of two millions of people having been safely
accomplished, Mr Alcock entered upon his first diplomatic struggle,
the point of which was merely to fix a day for the purpose of
exchanging the ratifications of Lord Elgin’s Treaty. The discussion
preliminary to this formality occupied no less than seven days. At
last the details are arranged, and it is decided that the Treaty is to be
carried in procession through the city, under a canopy ornamented
with flags and evergreens, surrounded by a guard of marines, and
followed by fifty blue-jackets; Captain Hand, with a large number of
his officers in uniform and on horseback, following immediately after
the four petty officers carrying the Treaty. We can well imagine the
effect which so novel a procession was likely to produce upon the
inhabitants of Yedo. When the formalities were accomplished,
“signals, arranged by the Japanese in advance (by fans from street to
street) conveyed the news to the Sampson with telegraphic speed in a
minute and a half, a distance of six miles.” So our Minister hoists his
flag, and settles himself down in solitary grandeur, to pass his life of
exile in solving the difficult problem of reconciling the civilisation he
represents with that which surrounds him, but which the jealousy of
the Government will not permit him to investigate. This does not,
however, prevent our author from entering upon lengthy and
interesting philosophical disquisitions upon the many moral, social,
and political questions which must, under such circumstances,
present themselves to a thoughtful mind. He has not been six weeks
so employed when he is suddenly roused from his speculations by a
tragical event which occurs at Yokuhama. As this is the first of a
series of exciting incidents, we will give our readers an epitome of
those which occurred during three years, and the particulars of
which are detailed at length in various parts of the book:—
“A Russian officer, with a sailor and a steward, were suddenly set upon in the
principal street by some armed Japanese, and hewn down with the most ghastly
wounds that could be inflicted. The sailor was cleft through his skull to the nostrils
—half the scalp sliced down, and one arm nearly severed from the shoulder
through the joint. The officer was equally mangled, his lungs protruding from a
sabre-gash across the body; the thighs and legs deeply gashed.”
In the succeeding tragedies the wounds are invariably of the above

savage nature, but we will not always inflict upon our readers a full
description of the horrible details.
Two months after this the servant of the French Consul is cut to
pieces in the street—cause unknown. By way of varying the
excitement, the Tycoon’s palace is burnt down about the same time,
and the Japanese Ministers propose to stop all business in
consequence. This is of course not considered a legitimate way of
evading disagreeable questions. Diplomatic difficulties continue to
be discussed, and the greater part of the settlement of Yokuhama is
burnt down:—
“While yet occupied by these events, we were startled by another of more

immediate and personal import. It was near midnight; Mr Eusden, the Japanese
secretary, was standing by my side, when the longest and most violent shock of an
earthquake yet experienced since our arrival brought every one to his feet with a
sudden impulse to fly from under the shaking roof. It began at first very gently, but
rapidly increased in the violence of the vibrations until the earth seemed to rock
under our feet, and to be heaved up by some mighty explosive powder in the
caldrons beneath.”
The nerves of our author scarcely recover from the shock of the
earthquake when they receive another of a different description. A
hasty step is heard outside his room, and “Captain Marten, of H.M.S.
Roebuck, threw back the sliding-panel. ‘Come quickly; your linguist
is being carried in badly wounded.’ My heart misgave me that his
death-knell had struck.” Of course it had; they seldom miss their
stroke in Japan. “The point” (of the sword) “had entered at his back
and came out above the right breast; and, thus buried in his body,
the assassin left it, and disappeared as stealthily as he came.” While
discussing this matter, in dashes the whole French Legation—the
French Consul-General at the head: “‘Nous voici! nous venons vous
demander de l’hospitalité—l’incendie nous a atteint.’ Then follows
Monsieur l’Abbé in a dressing-gown—a glass thermometer in one
hand, and a breviary in the other; then the Chancellor in slippers,
with a revolver and a bonnet de nuit.” What with an assassination in
one Legation and a fire in another on the same night, our
diplomatists have their hands full. Our author, however, seems to
have passed a few nights in comparative tranquillity after this, before
he is again roused at four o’clock in the morning by the arrival of an
express from Kanagawa with the news that about eight o’clock in the
evening two Dutch captains had been slain in the main street of
Yokuhama—“a repetition, in all its leading circumstances and
unprovoked barbarity, of the assassination perpetrated on the
Russians.” After this, beyond a few bad earthquakes, nothing
happens for a month or so, “when, on my return from a visit to
Kanagawa, the first news that greeted me as I entered the Legation
was of so startling and incredible a character that I hesitated to
believe what was told me. The Gotairo or Regent was said to have
been assassinated in broad daylight on his way to the palace, and
this, too, in the very midst of a large retinue of his retainers!” The
account, which our author gives at length, of this occurrence, and of
the causes which led to it, is most characteristic: we have only space
for the result:—
“Eight of the assailants were unaccounted for when all was over, and many of the
retinue were stretched on the ground, wounded and dying, by the side of those who
had made the murderous onslaught. The remnant of the Regent’s people, released
from their deadly struggle, turned to the norimon to see how it had fared with their
master in the brief interval, to find only a headless trunk: the bleeding trophy
carried away was supposed to have been the head of the Gotairo himself, hacked
off on the spot. But, strangest of all these startling incidents, it is further related
that two heads were found missing, and that which was in the fugitive’s hand was
only a lure to the pursuing party, while the true trophy had been secreted on the
person of another, and was thus successfully carried off, though the decoy paid the
penalty of his life.”
The head of the Regent is said to have been got safely out of Yedo,
and presented to the Prince, who was his enemy, and who spat upon
it with maledictions. It was reported afterwards to have been
exposed in the public execution-ground of the spiritual capital, with
a placard over it, on which was the following inscription: “This is the
head of a traitor, who has violated the most sacred laws of Japan—
those which forbid the admission of foreigners into the country.”
After this, with the exception of a “murderous onslaught made by a
drunken Yaconin on an English merchant at Hakodadi,” there is
another lull, varied only by putting the Legations in a state of
defence. They “were filled with Japanese troops, field-pieces were
placed in the courtyards of the several Legations, and the ministers
were urgently requested to abstain from going outside!” A month
passes, and life is absolutely becoming monotonous, from the
absence of the usual stimulant in the shape either of a fire, a murder,
or a good earthquake, when there suddenly appeared, “as we were
sitting down to dinner one evening, the Abbé Gérard, pale and
agitated, bringing with him, in a norimon, M. de Bellecourt’s Italian
servant, who had been attacked, while quietly standing at the gate of
the French Legation, by two Samourai (daimios’ retainers) passing at
the moment, and by one of whom he had been severely wounded.”
A strong digestion must be essential to the comfort of the
diplomatist in Japan, for “next month, a few minutes before the
dinner-hour, there was a rushing and scuffling of many feet along the
passages, the noise of which reached me in my dressing-room, at the
extremity of the building, and presently, high above all, came the
ominous cry of ‘Cadjee!’ (fire).” The Legation was nearly burnt to the
ground, but the Japanese servants behaved well, and ultimately
succeeded in extinguishing the flames. We will not recount, in our
list of excitements, all the escapes from murderous Yaconins and
disagreeable rencontres which are recorded, though they would
satisfy any moderate craving for “sensations;” and passing rapidly
by, as not worthy of notice, the case of an Englishman who shot a
Japanese (and for having punished whom Mr Alcock was afterwards
fined at Hong-Kong), come at once to the night of the 14th of
January, “when, about ten o’clock, I received a brief note from Mr
Harris, asking me to send surgical aid to Mr Heuskin, who had been
brought in wounded.”
Mr Heuskin was the secretary of the American Legation—a man
universally liked, and a most able public servant. He had received a
frightful gash across the abdomen, which proved fatal, besides other
thrusts and cuts of less moment. His funeral was attended by all the
members of the different Legations, at the risk, however, of their
lives. About this time, says our author, “an event occurred calculated
to give greater significance to the numerous sinister rumours afloat.
Hori Oribeno Kami, the most intelligent, experienced, and respected
of the governors of foreign affairs—the one best versed in European
business, and the most reasonable and conciliatory of his class—
disappeared from the scene.” In other words, he had ripped himself
up. The writer of this article, who had formerly been well acquainted
with this minister, happening to arrive in Japan shortly after his
death, received from the Dutch Consul the following account of the
event:—That gentleman had called on Hori Oribeno Kami one day,
had found him in rather low spirits, and, on inquiring the cause, was
informed by the fated minister that he was about to put an end to
himself on the following day; that he had already issued his
invitation-cards for the banquet at which the ceremony was to take
place; and, further, expressed his regret that the custom of the
country limited the invitation to his relations and most intimate
friends, and that he was thus deprived of the pleasure of requesting
the company of his visitor to partake of the meal which was destined
to terminate in so tragic a manner.
The foreign Legations after this come to the conclusion that life at
Yedo is attended by too many anxieties, and retire to Yokuhama till
the Government should promise to make things safer and more
comfortable. This they ultimately pledge themselves to do. Our
author has occasion shortly after to make a long overland journey
through the country, and on the night of his return to Yedo the
Legation is attacked by a band of assassins, who severely wound
Messrs Oliphant and Morrison, and very nearly murder everybody.
Some idea of the nature of that midnight struggle may be formed
from the following list of persons killed and wounded in the passages
and garden of the Legation:—
Killed.
One of the Tycoon’s body-guard, and one groom, 2

Two of the assailants, 2
Severely wounded.
Tycoon’s soldier, 1
Daimio’s soldier, 1
Porters (one died same day), 2
Assailant (captured—committed suicide), 1
Member of Legation, 1
Servants of Legation, 2
Slightly wounded.
Tycoon’s guard, 7
Daimio’s guard, 2
Priest in temple adjoining, 1
Member of Legation, 1
Total killed and wounded on the spot, 23
With reference to the fate of these assailants, the following extract

from a letter from Mr Alcock to Earl Russell appears in the papers
just laid before Parliament:—
“The Ministers have since informed me that three more of the assailants on the
night of the 5th July have been arrested in Prince Mito’s territories, and will be
proceeded against; also that the only survivor in the recent attack on the Foreign
Minister has confessed that some of the party were men engaged in the attack on
the Legation. If so—and only fourteen were actually engaged (which has always
seemed to me doubtful)—they will have pretty well accounted for the whole
number: Three having been killed on the spot; three taken prisoners and since
executed; two committed suicide; three more lately arrested; three supposed to
have been killed in the recent attack on the Foreign Minister. Total, fourteen.”
The following paper found on the body of one of the assailants

gives the reasons of the band for making the attempt:—
“I, though I am a person of low standing, have not patience to stand by and see
the sacred empire defiled by the foreigner. This time I have determined in my heart
to undertake to follow out my master’s will. Though, being altogether humble
myself, I cannot make the might of the country to shine in foreign nations, yet with
a little faith, and a little warrior’s power, I wish in my heart separately (by myself),
though I am a person of low degree, to bestow upon my country one out of a great
many benefits. If this thing from time to time may cause the foreigner to retire, and
partly tranquillise both the minds of the Mikado and the Tycoon (or the manes of
departed Mikados and Tycoons), I shall take to myself the highest praise.
Regardless of my own life, I am determined to set out.”
[Here follow the fourteen signatures.]
It must be admitted that the Lonins, as the bravos are called,

choose their victims with great impartiality as to rank and
nationality; they murder servants and ministers, both Japanese and
foreign, as the fancy seizes them. A few days after the massacre at the
Legation, two of the Japanese Ministers were attacked, but their
retinue beat off their assailants: after this nothing particular
happened for some time, except that the Governor of Yedo had to rip
himself up “for having offended by intruding his opinion at a grand
council of the daimios (he not being a daimio).” Meantime the
Government offer to build a fortified Legation, and Sir Rutherford
moves his habitation temporarily down to Yokuhama: the hostile
class seem more determined than ever to carry their point, as we may
gather from the following letter left by four of his retainers at the
house of their master, the Prince of Mito, whose service they leave to
become outlaws:—
“We become lonins now, since the foreigner gains more and more influence in
the country, unable to see the ancient law of Gongen Sama violated. We become all
four lonins, with the intention of compelling the foreigners to depart.”
[Here follow the four signatures.]
Shortly after this, Sir Rutherford, who has been dining down at
Yokuhama with M. de Bellecourt, receives the news at ten o’clock at
night, that Ando Tsusimano Kami, the second Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and the one supposed to be most favourable to the
maintenance of foreign relations, had been attacked as he was on his
way to the palace.
“Ando, it appears, instantly divined that he was to be attacked, and, throwing

himself out of the norimon, drew his sword to defend himself. It was well he lost
no time, for already his people were being cut down by the desperate band of
assassins. The next instant he received a sabre-cut across the face and a spear-
thrust in the side that had wellnigh proved fatal. As in the previous case of the
Regent, the life-and-death struggle was brief as it was bloody. In a few seconds
seven of the assailants lay stretched, wounded or dead, on the ground, and only
one (the eighth) escaped.”
The Minister himself, after lingering for some time between life
and death, finally recovered. While our author is listening to these
details there is an alarm of fire, and he spends the rest of the night in
putting it out.
“It lasted several hours, and a large block of houses was destroyed. The danger of
its spreading over the whole settlement was at one time very great; and that which
made the event more serious was the fact of some men dressed like the Japanese
police having been discovered by Lieutenant Aplin at the commencement actively
engaged in spreading the fire to an adjoining house.”
This is about the last of our author’s list of sensations; but in order
to complete the thrilling category we will take a leaf or two out of the
Blue-Book of his successor, Colonel Neale, who is appointed to the
charge of the Legation during Sir Rutherford’s absence. No sooner
does he arrive there than he proceeds to test the charms of a
residence at Yedo. A few days after his arrival he writes as follows to
his French colleague, whose three years’ experience has taught him
not to move out of Yokuhama unnecessarily:—
“Sir,—It is with deep regret I have to acquaint you that this Legation has passed
through the ordeal of another murderous assault on the part of Japanese assassins.
About midnight last night, the sentry at my bedroom door was suddenly attacked
and desperately wounded, his life being despaired of. The corporal going his
rounds at the same moment was murderously assailed a short distance off; but he
managed to reach my door, and there he fell and died. His body was conveyed into
the room in which we were assembled, and was found to have received no less than
sixteen desperate sword and lance wounds. The wounded sentry was also on the
floor of the room, dying fast from nine wounds. This man, by name Charles Sweet,
died the following morning.”
After this, Colonel Neale thinks Yedo disagreeable as a permanent

residence, and retires to Yokuhama; but, to judge by a letter he
writes to Lord Russell a month afterwards, he does not seem to have
improved his position:—
“My Lord,—It becomes my painful duty once more to lay before your Lordship
the details of the barbarous murder of another British subject, Mr C. L.
Richardson, a merchant residing at Yokuhama, and the desperate wounding of two
other merchants, Mr W. Marshall and Mr W. C. Clarke, both of Yokuhama; the
latter gentleman is likely to lose his arm. Mr Richardson, nearly cut to pieces, fell
from his horse; and while lying in a dying state, one of the high officials of the
cortege, borne in a chair, is stated to have told his followers to cut the throat of the
unfortunate gentleman. The lady (Mrs Borradaile), though cut at herself,
miraculously escaped unwounded; never drawing rein, and in an exhausted and
fainting state, she reached Yokuhama. The body of Mr Richardson was afterwards
found, and brought here for interment.”
And so for the present ends the bloody story: we have condensed it
as much as possible, both for the reader’s sake and our own; but,
considering the important interests we have at stake in Japan, we
have felt it our duty to do all in our power to induce people to read
the work before us. After they have gratified that morbid craving for
excitement which seems to be the literary taste of the day, they may
perhaps be induced seriously to think what is to be done under the
circumstances. We have not recounted the efforts which our
diplomatic agents in Japan have made to obtain redress, nor the
success which has attended those efforts. They are to be found
detailed at some length in the work before us. If the reader will take
the trouble carefully to read Sir Rutherford’s account of the
administrative system of Japan, and more especially of the feudal

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Media and the Dissemination of Fear:

Pandemics, Wars and Political

Statecraft and the Political Economy of Capitalism 1st

Computational Propaganda: Political Parties,

John William McCormack: A Political Biography Garrison

Pandemics, Economics and Inequality: Lessons from the

Wars, Laws, Rights and the Making of Global

The Economics of Pandemics: Exploring Globally Shared

Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts:

Media and the

More information about this series at

Media and the

ISSN 2634-5978 ISSN 2634-5986 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Paul Gilligan / Getty Images

1 Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic, Intermedia,

Part I Disseminating and Mitigating Fear During Pandemics

2 From Black Death to COVID-19: The Mediated

3 Hebrew Popular Press, Catastrophe Stories, and the

Part II Spreading Fear Across Borders: Journalism and

4 Fear-Relations: Word War I, Military Authorities, and the

5 Voices for a World In-Between? Exile Media as

6 Terror, Fear, Disbelief, and Complacency in the Face of

7 The News Media and the Ever-Present Fear in the

Part III State-Sponsored Fear and Intimidation 153

8 Fear of the Spanish Red Danger: Anti-­Communist

9 Nazi Broadcasts to a Neutral Country: Disseminating

10 Fear of Communism in the Twentieth-­Century United

11 “Beware of Terrorists, Spies and Chaos!”: Stabilization

12 Educate Online Through Online Fear: Exploring the

13 Media Logic, Terrorism, and the Politics of Fear275

Aysha Agbarya is a PhD student at the Department of Communication

Group at the International Communication Association (ICA). Her

Susanne Kinnebrock is Professor of Public Communication at the

Alberto Pena-Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the

and alternative media. Christian has recently published his research in

Fig. 7.1 Holocaust and Nakba interconnected through the war of

Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic,

Nelson Ribeiro and Christian Schwarzenegger

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

two distinct concepts—fear is an emotion and threat a cognitive process—

example of this, while in contemporary times migrants are presented as a

and early twenty-first century; a period during which public communica-

Researching the Mediation of Fear

specific enemies.11 Propaganda campaigns that steered fear were abundant

aftermath of the 9/11 attack, terrorism was framed as a continuous threat,

The historical, global, and transnational dimension of the chapters

domestic radio broadcasting was a key feature in the dissemination of fear,

Jeffries, Fiona. “Mediating Fear”, Global Media and Communication 9, no. 1

Disseminating and Mitigating Fear

From Black Death to COVID-19:

Anna Wagner and Doreen Reifegerste

The Role of Fear in Pandemic Times

A. Wagner (*) • D. Reifegerste

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Media as Disseminators of Information and Fear

In pandemic times and particularly during the younger pandemics such as

historic contexts, media encompass a great variety of communicative mea-

The media channels used to disseminate pandemic-related information

Media and Adaptive Forms of Fear in Pandemic Times:

among the general population. The intentional dissemination of fear in

content of the disseminated information but also on its potential to incite

openly admitted the uncertainties”47 whereas the Australian mass media

Media and Maladaptive Forms of Fear in Pandemic

As the EPPM assumes, fear can be maladaptive and dysfunctional if it is

1 Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic, Intermedia,

Part I Disseminating and Mitigating Fear During Pandemics

2 From Black Death to COVID-19: The Mediated

3 Hebrew Popular Press, Catastrophe Stories, and the

Part II Spreading Fear Across Borders: Journalism and

4 Fear-Relations: Word War I, Military Authorities, and the

5 Voices for a World In-Between? Exile Media as

6 Terror, Fear, Disbelief, and Complacency in the Face of

7 The News Media and the Ever-Present Fear in the

Part III State-Sponsored Fear and Intimidation 153

8 Fear of the Spanish Red Danger: Anti-Communist

9 Nazi Broadcasts to a Neutral Country: Disseminating

10 Fear of Communism in the Twentieth-Century United

11 “Beware of Terrorists, Spies and Chaos!”: Stabilization

12 Educate Online Through Online Fear: Exploring the

13 Media Logic, Terrorism, and the Politics of Fear275