Fear's Slave: The Mass Media and Islam after September 11

Abstract

This paper investigates the purpose of society's construction of ‘others’ through the gaze of the mass media. During times of crisis, the paper argues, Western mass media are faced with an irreconcilable paradox: the simultaneous demand for, and denial of, a fear-inspiring other (the Soviet Union, Al Qaeda, etc.) This paradigm of otherness was overcome in the period post-Cold War and pre-9/11 as the US media was able to demonise ‘others’ at home — the war on drugs, for example. The question this paper will address, then, is: what are the motives driving the US mass media towards an other constructed along lines similar to the Soviet-era other? Who is to ‘blame’ for this phenomenon — the media, or the society in which these media operate?

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