Fear Control in Media Discourse

Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 brill.com/seeu Fear Control in Media Discourse Davor Marko University of Belgrade Center for Social Research ANALITIKA, Sarajevo Abstract This article deals with how fear is misused in media discourse. Pursuing the claim that it is impossible to eliminate fear from the public sphere, this paper argues that fear control is a technique widely used by certain interest groups to generate and spread uncertainty among people in order to create an atmosphere in which their goals are easily reachable. This paper will discuss the concepts of discourse, hegemony, and power relations in order to show how public language (both written and spoken) in media discourse reflects, creates, and maintains power relations. In this sense, fear, which is a crucial “energizing fuel” of such public language, could be considered and further elaborated as both a contextual variable and as a tool for facilitating power relations by applying various techniques. Aiming to show how media use and control the nature and level of fear in public discourse, I will discuss two techniques – the commercialization of fear and the method of “othering.” While commercialization implies the mass (re)production and (re)appropriation of fear in a public space, “othering” has been applied when the object of reporting is an out-group individual or community and self-group is using the media as a tool for their negative portrayal, thus creating boundaries and provoking discrimination and violence. The case of Serbia will be used to indicate how techniques of “othering,” linked with the regime’s propaganda, may contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of fear, and make a people seek protection and become easy prey for manipulation. Keywords media; language of fear; discourse of fear; hegemony; otherness; power; Serbia Introduction: The Notion of Fear Fear matters. As Debiec and Le Doux explained, “fear is a natural part of life, [it] occurs when we are threatened” (Debiec and Le Doux 2004: 807). But not all threats are genetically programmed; some are created, provoked, and generated by the use of various means and techniques, for example © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/18763332-03702005 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 201 media. Examining discussions on fear in politics, it is evident that the main tendency is to reduce it from the public sphere. Political theory emphasizes the impossibility of its total elimination: ‘political order without fear is the unattainable utopia’ (Corradi et al. 1992). There is a certain technique for its reduction, and that is the control or management of fear. Fear control means that a certain subject in power has the ability to recognize the manipulative potential of fear, to define its content (the object of fear) and its scope, and to use various techniques to spread it in order to create a context of fear within which ordinary individuals will be easier manipulated and controlled. It is, of course, a trap to consider the public in general terms as static, uniform, generally passive, scared and also to consider the capacity of each member of the public to deconstruct the media messages in an equal way. People make choices, but they base their choices upon certain criteria, cognitive or emotional relations, belonging, trust, etc. As Sauer would point out, there are “linguistic forms, as bearers of meaning, are socio-historically determined, and each text functions as reconstruction of variation of the socio-historical determinants” (Sauer, in Wodak, 1989: 6). In this sense, newscasters are important as figures who cultivate characteristics that are taken to be typical of the ‘target audience’ in order to establish a relationship of solidarity with it, and they can mediate newsworthy events to the audience in the latter’s common sense terms (Hartley 1982: 87). But persuasion works best among people who belong to the same group – linguistic, ethnic, cultural, ideological. Fairclough introduced the concept of naturalization of ideologies in order to explain how certain discourses created by media increase the chance to manipulate the public by referring to general themes, accepted values and habits. There are various types of fear and various forms of its control. Hollander distinguishes among acute and chronic, personal and collective. While he claims that acute fear was studied by Darwin, as an emotion or instinct, chronic fear could be considered a condition (Hollander 2004: 865-6). In this sense, acute fear is similar to what Hobbes describes as the permanent human fear that has its pure demonstration in the state of nature. This existential Hobbesian fear presents the main reason for people’s readiness to give up part of their freedoms for the sake of their own security and to subordinate part of their freedoms to the strict and authoritative rule of Leviathan. But in a sense, the Hobbesian concept of the security state definitely does not reduce fear. In fact, it just transforms it from a pure natural instinct for survival into the more institutionalized form of fear. Fear of 202 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 each other (‘homo homini lupus’) becomes fear of the authority and its absolute right to punish everyone who disobeys its rules. “When a government induces fear of itself in the people or in some of them while claiming to act to make them secure, we have a tyrannical or incipiently tyrannical or (oddly) a local tyrannical situation” (Kateb 2004: 905). Modern liberalism, which gives impetus to revolutions and initiates the struggle for citizens and their rights, was based, among other principles, on the idea of the ‘reduction of fear and repression’ in the public space with an aim to create an order free of totalitarian and despotic methods. As Locke and Burke would say, “without fear we are passive,” and we need it not only because it alerts us to real danger, but because it arouses a heightened state of experience (Robin 2004: 927–8). Reflecting on fear and politics, Shklar introduced the “liberalism of fear” in order to show how the fear and cruelty are unavoidable parts of political order. Fear is the principle around which liberal regimes establish a consensus in order to reduce it from the public sphere. Shklar succeeds in moving debate into the domain of negative politics, referring to concepts such as injustice, disorder, inequality, and the question of where fear –understood as a political principle– plays an important role (Shklar 1989). Usually, this happens when theorists cannot identify ‘rational, universal, and defensible grounds for positive political moralities;” then, “they look to fear as a substitute, albeit negative foundation” (Robin 2004: 937). Therefore, fear matters. And for its successful exercise, it is important to define who / what is the object of fear (whom or what to be scared of) and who is the subject (who has to feel fear), and who is the mediator (who controls the flow, degree and nature of fear in public space). This paper will assess the role of media as a tool of forging and generating fear; the ‘others’ –understood in ethnic, religious, national, cultural, and political senses as an ‘enemy’ – will be analyzed as the objects of fear; and the Self-group, scared and manipulated by the media, will be defined as a subject of fear. The case of Serbia and its authoritative regime of the 90s, known as the regime of fear, will be analyzed. Considering its power relations, hegemonic struggles within Serbian society, misuse of media for the sake of propaganda and negative portrayal of others, the analysis intends to explore how media are (mis)used for the sake of generating fear, and how the language of ‘otherness’ is transformed into into the language of ‘fear,’ if ‘others’ are members of national, ethnic or confessional groups (in this case, Muslims) different from those with which the analyzed media are affiliated. The commercialization of fear and the techniques of othering will be elaborated as means of fear control and manipulation in media in this text. D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 203 Hegemony, Ideology and Power Fear is always controlled by someone – usually, but not necessarily, by the one in power. Therefore, power relations among various groups in society have to be examined, along with potentials for generating fear and, especially, for its public manipulation and control. Fear, especially in the political sphere, is usually connected with certain ideologies and struggles for hegemony in one’s society. A framework for studying the connection between language (public language, language in media), power and ideology, was developed within cultural studies and critical theory, and later applied by the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Analyzing texts and talks, processes of text production, consumption and distribution, and including sociocultural analysis of discursive events are important dimensions of this approach. Discourses created by certain groups, applying particular ideologies and using a specific language, are in constant struggle with discourses created by other groups. Sometimes the same groups, as part of their strategy, create excluding discourses, since “discourses are tactical elements or blocs operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy” (Foucault 1981: 101). In this sense, language is understood as an instrument and it only gains power in the hands of the powerful; it is not powerful ‘per se.’ As Sornig would say, “never the words themselves should be dubbed evil and poisonous” (Sornig, in Wodak, 1989: 96). Politicians employ language and specific techniques in order to promote their worldview. In order to reach their goal, and persuade others, the language of politicians “must consist to a large extent of euphemisms, rhetorical repression of the actual problems, empty words, nebulous half-statements, stereotyped expressions and commonplaces” (Brekle, in Wodak, 1989: 87). Applying formulas of ‘enemy’ and ‘others,’ politicians strive to gain attention and support for their own group, using language to create the borders between ‘us’ (normally, good guys) and ‘them’ (labeled as ‘bad’). In a more radical sense, discourses based on negative portrayal of others are the basis for ethnocentrism and racism. Van Dijk is the one who extensively researched the role of language, discourse, and communication in the (re-)production of ethnocentrism and racism within the power-relations established in society. This is usually part of a struggle between groups that dominate and minority groups in which minorities are “systematically, although often indirectly and subtly, denied equal rights, that is, equal access to material or cultural resources, and 204 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 equal opportunities in housing, work, health care or education” (van Dijk, in Wodak, 1989: 202). Lack of access to power, in most cases, is considered to be the main marker of minority status. Applying the concept of hegemony, scholars of CDA attempt to present the dialectical conception of structure and event(s) in one society. Hegemony is understood as the power over society as a whole by one group (bloc, class, ethnic elite) in alliance with other social forces. As an unstable equilibrium, it implies constant struggle among blocs for domination taking economic, political, and ideological forms (Fairclough 1995: 76). As Fairclough claims, agents of hegemonic struggle are social institutions that present exclusive ‘ideological-discursive formations’ (IDF). IDFs are a kind of institutionalized, or formalized, discourses. Each group in society, including the dominant one and those subordinated, has been labeled as a particular IDF. Therefore, dominant group(s) conceptualize their own IDF(s) around particular and exclusive perceptions, values and notions. Each IDF shows a cotangential tendency to present itself as a dominant, desirable, natural and ‘common to all’ knowledge. To describe the struggle among various discourses produced by IDFs in a certain society, and the dilemmas that arise for people out of contradictions in social practices, Fairclough introduced the concept of “orders of discourse” as domains of hegemony and ideological struggle (Fairclough 1995: 25-7). Fear is important for such a struggle, and it could be perceived in this discussion in two ways – as a unique and dominant discourse, and as an element among others contained in various discourses that are in struggle. As a separate and dominant discourse, the discourse of fear presents a contextual variable influencing power-relations and the nature of relations between various groups in a single society. This characterized the regime in Serbia during the 90s, when the fear of ‘others’ was forged through media discourse. Regime-controlled media generated fear of out-group communities (especially during the wars, 1991 – 1995, and during the Kosovo crisis and armed conflict in 1999), targeting Muslims in general, and Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians in particular as the main enemies of the Serbian people. Some, like Foucault, when describing power-relations as a perfect ‘architecture of power’ (the concept of the Panopticon), stated that its perfection and discipline is achieved by usage of the two types of fear. Public, or visible, fear is metaphorically represented by the tower, located in the central part of the building, inhabited by keepers who observe individuals on lower levels but are ‘invisible’ themselves (protected by tinted glass on the windows). Since these keepers are invisible, individuals on the lower D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 205 level (a metaphor for ordinary people) are not only afraid of them; the situation itself facilitates a kind of inner fear, self-censorship, which is not related to uncertainty. (This could be linked with the ‘citizen’s duty’ to obey the laws, because disobedience will lead to punishment.) Others, such as Altheide, refer to the culture of fear when analyzing certain trends in media reporting within a specific context. Fear can also be an element presented in various discourses, created by various groups – majority and minority, dominant and subordinated, etc. In this case, the leitmotif of these various discourses is ‘mediated fear of the other and the different’ (this will be discussed in section 4 of this paper). When discussing the tactics of politicians and media in attracting their audience or public, Hall and Fairclough use the concept of ‘naturalization’ in order to illustrate the media tendency to ‘translate official viewpoints into a public idiom and to naturalize them within the horizon of understandings of the various publics’ (Fairclough 1995: 61; Hall 1978). The assumption is that people would rather accept that information and those messages that are in line with their expectations and common sense. As Hall would say, ‘the most naturalized things are related to those commonsensically given by all members of some community’ (Hall 1982). The more dominant some particular representation of social relationship, the greater degree of naturalization of its associated practices (Fairclough 1995: 33). Linguistic systems, as metaphors for social processes and relations (Halliday 1978: 3), produce alternative lexicalizations (terminology selection) that are related to diverse ideological positions. For example, the term ‘shqiptar’1 in Albanian and Serbian has a completely different meaning. While Albanians will find it offensive when someone from Serbia uses this term for them, and ultranationalists and extremists from Serbia will even use it with the purpose of offending Albanians from Kosovo, on the other hand Albanians will say of themselves that they are ‘shqiptars’, and will not find it abusive. In this sense, “a lexicalization becomes naturalized to the extent that ‘its’ IDF achieves dominance, and hence the capacity to win acceptance for it as ‘the lexicon,’ the neutral code” (Fairclough 1995: 34). For example, frequent reports in certain media on Islam and terrorism will make their public (which doesn’t belong to the Muslim world, and is not is familiarized with 1) ‘Shqiptar’ is an Albanian ethnonym, by which Albanians refer to themselves. According to some translations, it means ‘the son of the eagle’, the eagle being the symbol presented on the Albanian flag. 206 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 this religion and culture) accept this behavior as normal and typical for Islam and Muslims. The role of the media is important since media do not passively describe or record news events, but actively reconstruct them on the basis of many types of discourses. “The social function of media is to legitimize and produce existing asymmetrical power relationship by putting across the voices of powerful as if they were the voices of ‘common sense’” (Fairclough 1995: 63). Considering media articles as reported speech, Fairclough claims the fine detail of media text is ‘tuned to the social structures and power relations within which the media operate, and has ideological effects in mystifying relations of domination, and sustaining a view of public language and practice as transparent’ (Fairclough 1995: 25). Media as means of fear control and influence As Bacon wrote, “Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales […]” (Bacon 1837: 6). The media, as global ‘storytellers’ in today’s world, are often (mis)used in the process of generating fear and insecurity and using fear as manipulation in the public space. In any case, their role may be both positive and negative. The media are considered to be among the most important pillars of democracy. As a fourth estate, the media have to be free, impartial, professional, objective and credible in order to fulfil their role (Carlyle 2006; Shultz 1998). This concept of the media derives from the principle that the media’s responsibility is to inform their audience and to emphasize media independence from the government. Acting in such a manner, as a ‘check and balance,’ the media are essential to the healthy functioning of a democracy. Additionally, the media raise awareness among ordinary people about various topics, including those related to fear, insecurity, and injustice worldwide. Acting in this way, the media transform the nature of fear experienced by members of the civil society by making it public (Keane, 1991). Transforming fear into a public issue, the media imply that for such a “public issue there are public counter-means” (Podunavac, Keane, and Sparks 2008: 133, 142). What we are witnessing today are different types of deviations from these principles. “Economic pressures made news a more ‘saleable commodity’ in order to win a bigger audience, and more advertising revenues accordingly” (Fairclough, 1995: 62). In order to survive or to be sustainable, D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 207 the media have been transformed from mere informers to active agents in the sphere of business and politics. The French philosopher Althusser writes that “the task of the media is to perform in such a way as to systematically permeate the social space and to provide a system of images, ideas and aptitudes that will hide the real aim of those in power and their narratives, making the accepted wisdom out of it” (Althusser 1979). The power of the media is, in most cases, either symbolic or persuasive. Pursuing this claim, we shall say that the media primarily pose the potential to control the minds of their audience / public, but not directly their actions (Klapper 1960; McCombs and Shaw 1972). Mind control is the essence of persuasive social power and typical of the power of the media (Gunter 1987; van Dijk 1988). The central concept involved in a relevant socio-cognitive theory of mind control is that of the mental model. A model is a mental representation of an experience, for example an event people witness, participate in, or read about (Johnson-Laird 1993; van Dijk 1985b, 1987; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). The media may persuade their users or public to adopt the preferred models. Van Dijk claims that media, alongside politicians, “are able to construct popular resentment as meaning what they please, for instance, as a democratic majority legitimation for the restriction of immigration or civil rights” (van Dijk 1997). Agenda setting theory, introduced in 1972 by McCombs and Shaw, explores a major media influence on audiences by the choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them. The media influence the public agenda by promoting the issues around which political campaigns and voter decisions are organized, and there are at least four rhetorical cues that affect agenda-setting process: (a) frequency of repetition, (b) the prominence, (c) the degree of conflict presentation in media, and (d) the framing of a news item or context (McCombs & Shaw 1993). An even stronger argument has been offered by Baudrillard, who claims that “postmodern societies, saturated by media and information’s technologies, have entered the age of simulation.” He distinguishes three orders of simulations: first, that of signification, which means that reality is represented through signs; second, reproduction, where signs refer to signs; and third, simulation where signs “serve to mask the absence of reality” (Baudrillard 1981). The generation of fear could be of multiple character, but two domains are most important: a) the industrialization and commercialization of fear (in the field of cultural industries, where the mainstream media, television, film and cinema are ‘selling’ fear as a good), b) the galvanization of fear in 208 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 public discourse, which creates the image of a ‘common enemy’ to be feared, distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and fear of ‘others.’ These aspects will be discussed in the following chapters. Industrialization and the Discourse of Fear Technological and economic power enables elites (or the capitalist class) to use the mass production of various media contents, to commercialize and standardize them, in order to passivize large audience. As Adorno pointed out, the cultural industry is the ultimate medium of social control, and its products possess the hidden motives able to repress our imagination and render large masses inactive. A critique of popular culture, sublimated within the concept of the culture industry, was presented by Adorno and Horkheimer in their crucial book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). Their critique of mass media targets the ability of those media to factory produce standardized cultural goods (such as movies, radio programs, magazines), in a way that manipulates the audience and transforms them into passive consumers. Standardization in the sense of media content production is related to the “formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit” (Laughey 2007: 204). But why do people keep on coming back for more and more products, despite the fact that there are so standardized and predicted? Adorno explained it with the simple sentence: ‘pleasure must not demand any effort.’ This theory allowed for further analysis of mass media influence on audience and society in general, stressing their role as cultivators (Gerbner), but as well as ability of the various types of audience to resist (Hall and Birmingham Scholl at general). Fear has not been directly analyzed, produced and standardized as a media product, within these theories, but they definitely provide support for further discussion of its manipulative potential. In his documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002), director and filmactivist Michael Moore made an attempt to understand the real nature of violence in the US, as a reaction to the massacre at Columbine High School. What he discovered is that the government and the media are creating an atmosphere – or, to be precise, a culture – of fear that leads ordinary people to arm themselves. One of interviewees in his documentary, controversial and apocalyptic-styled musician Marilyn Manson, said that we can talk about “a campaign of fear and consumption,” where the main aim is to D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 209 “keep people afraid and they’ll consume” (De Boear 2002/03). In order to support his claim, Manson cited Colgate’s commercial containing a fearbased message (‘if you have bad breath, [people] are not going to talk to you’), and explaining that mainstream and controlled media would rather accept him as a reason for violent behavior than the President of the US, who ordered bombings that directly resulted in mass killings.2 When he refers to the discourse of fear, Altheide explains it as “the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of everyday life” (Altheide 2003). Within such a discourse, a new social identity has been promoted, that of the victim. Victimization and, especially, self-victimization resembles the frequent and salient usage of certain words, such as fear, in media discourse. A discourse of self-victimization has been often used and re-produced in the Serbian public space, whether its politicians refer to ‘the global conspiracy against Serbian people,’ or – in a more direct terms – pointing to specific sources of threat such as Bosnian Muslims, the United States of America, the Hague Tribunal, or the European Union. Many of these stereotypic relations and images have been transferred into a public space through media reporting, filming, political campaigns, etc. Altheide suggests that when we frequently use various words together in public discourse they may become “meaningfully joined” as sign and signifier, as connotation and denotation (Altheide 2003). Consequently, over time, it becomes unnecessary to use the word fear with, for example, violence, crime, and more recently, Islam. Explaining this fear mongering as something that “politicians use to sell themselves to voters, TV and print magazines [to] sell themselves to viewers and readers […] and corporations [to] sell consumer products,” Glassner listed three techniques: repetition, the depiction of isolated incidents as trends, and misdirection (Glassner 2004: 819, 823). Repetition means the number of published articles or broadcasted stories on certain issues, which usually doesn’t correspond to the significance of the real situation. The christening of isolated incidents as trends is the most pervasive and persuasive technique, since it is used in the form of sensational reporting that “deserves attention” and “provokes reaction.” As Glassner wrote, using a metaphor, “if magician wants to make a coin appear to vanish from his 2) See further: “Marilyn Manson Interview on Bowling for Columbine,” 11 October 2002, on Bowling for Columbine Official Website 2002-10-11. Available at <http://www.bowlingfor columbine.com/media/clips/windowsmedia.php?Clip=manson1021LG>. 210 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 right hand, he may try to get the audience to look at his left while he gets rid of the coin” (Glassner 2004: 822). For much of its history, in the West not only mass media but the movie industry has portrayed specific groups (Black people, Arabs, Russians, and Muslims today) in a predominately negative light. This process of stereotipization becomes social only when stereotyped pictures are shared by large number of people within social groups of entities. We are usually resorting to prejudice when we characterize a person based on a stereotype, without knowledge of the total facts. To take an example, Islam and Islamic revivalism are easily reduced to stereotypes of Islam against the West, Islam’s war with modernity, or Muslim rage, extremism, fanaticism, and terrorism. The ‘f’ and ‘t’ words, ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘terrorism,’ have become linked in the minds of many (Esposito 1992: 173). As a result of showing and accepting these stereotyped pictures, prejudices towards specific groups are produced. Techniques of ‘othering’ in media Attitudes towards the ‘other’ and media perception of the ‘other’ and the ‘different’ are topics that have occupied the attention of academics ever since the time of Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922), and this attention intensified during the period of the Cold War. Feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, identity politics and the politics of difference contributed to new notions of ‘otherness.’ Today, the idea of the ‘other’ is experiencing a time-conditioned (re)interpretation in the present world of global relations, commercialization and advanced communication technology. The ‘other’ grows closer due to the faster flow of information and advanced media technologies. On the other hand, it grows farther away due to specific reaction to the values and character of the ‘other’ and the ‘different,’ which mainly results in the strengthening of each group’s own identity and the highlighting of those values that are different from those of the ‘others.’ Although the category of the ‘other’ has been known since ancient times – in the times of Plato there were discussions about an ‘observer’ (the Self) and an ‘observed’ (the Other) – just recently this term, ‘the other,’ has become a part of recognizable and broadly-accepted sociological (and media) analysis. There are many authors who have written on how ‘we’ see and describe ‘them’ in anthropology, sociology and social psychology (Asad, 1973; Fabian 1983; Hamilton 1981; Zebrowitz 1990). This term is D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 211 mainly used by authors who identify themselves with post-modernism and cultural studies (Reader 1995; Said 1997; Riggins 1992; Stojković 2002; Gudykunst and Bella 2002; Vandenfels 2005). Some authors use the plural form, ‘Others,’ to avoid stereotypical homogenization and to emphasize heterogeneity (cultural, religious, political, sexual, ethnic, etc.). Questions about the media’s role in the (re)production of dominant, as well as alternative, ideologies and representations of ‘Others’ using sophisticated methods, such as editorial policies, selections of information, and usage of stereotypes, are widely debated. As Schwalbe and his colleagues have shown, ‘othering’ is part of a social process whereby a dominant group defines into existence an inferior group. According to them, this implies that a sense of Self-group has been established and that sense requires a kind of symbolic boundary to be defined and framed within. As they wrote, ‘these boundaries occur through institutional processes that are grounded in everyday situations and encounters, including language, discourse, accounts, and conversation’ (Shwalbe et al. 2000). In regard to the ‘other’ groups, the language used in portraying them is usually language of differentiation or exclusion, and usually part of this language involves the discourse of fear. Constructing the identity of the Self-group, based on negative differentiation from the ‘others,’ usually requires the discourse of fear for its construction. As Altheide claims, this discourse involves ‘evocative entertainment formats that promote visual, emotional, and dramatic experience that can be vicariously lived, shared, and identified with by audience members’ (Altheide 2003). This shared fear of a common enemy leads to Self-victimization. Accordingly, shared fear becomes a grouping principle or one of the most important energetic elements of collectiveness. Defining a “common enemy” enables rulers to “transform their existential uncertainty into focused, galvanizing fear” (Robin 2004: 930). Analyzing media discourse on ‘others’ contributes to an overall insight into the broad ideological and socio-cultural system of group relations, power and dominance. As van Dijk states, “we write and talk about them, especially when their presence becomes socially salient or otherwise interesting” (van Dijk, 1997). Many authors have shown that Western media were and are still engaged in the reproduction of (negative) stereotypes and prejudices against the ‘Others’ (Hartmann & Husband 1974; van Dijk 1991; Jager and Link 1993; Said 1997; Esposito 2007). Discourse plays an important role in the (re)production of prejudice and racism. It should be mentioned that “today the public expression of racism, ethnicism, and intolerance is more complex than it was in the past because it tends to occur in situations 212 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 where tolerance of diversity is a socially recognized norm, frequently one that is legally sanctioned” (Riggins 1997:7). Stereotyping and the process of categorization are crucial for understanding how ‘othering’ becomes an unavoidable part of media logic. The term was introduced by Lippmann in 1922 as he described stereotypes as a kind of mental system, evaluative and irrational in nature. It is a natural tendency of the human mind to simplify the surrounding world and reduce it to a set of defined categories and ordered concepts. “To a certain degree, the cognitive process of oversimplifying and overgeneralizing by the use of schemata is a normal and necessary way of information processing” (Quasthoff, in Wodak, 1989: 186). The use of stereotypes is a way of dealing with existing and very often contradictory information in what might be called a ‘logic of exception.’ As Quasthoof pointed out, “targets of stereotypical thinking are normally outgroups whose strangeness and distinctiveness has been used as a psychological mechanism for establishing the utmost distance between the self and the object of defence” (Quasthoff, in Wodak, 1989: 190). In practice, this ‘logic of exception’ could be applied in situations where a general rule (all X are Y) and empirical counterevidence (Z is an exception to the rule) are not in correlation. For example, the general rule or common knowledge on Muslims in the Western world could be that ‘they are all bad or backward,’ but there are some among them who are ‘not like the others.’ When we apply this logic, the explanation would sound like this – ‘he / she, whom I know personally, is not like the others, he / she is not a real Muslim.’ “This strategy immunizes the universal rule of stereotypes against counterevidence” (Quasthoff, in Wodak, 1989: 188-189). Discursive Control of Fear in Serbian Media Serbian society has been characterized with divisions along many lines. We could identify at least three divisive lines along which the borders between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ (for the sake of this papers, ‘Them’ are Muslims or Bosniaks) could be found – ideological, religious and ethnic. The current ideological division derived from the 1990s, when the entire society, as well as the media, was divided among those who supported the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and those who opposed it. This division has been has transformed into a paradigm of the ‘first’ (backward and nationalistic) and ‘second’ (citizen oriented) Serbia (Colovic, Mimica, 1992). During the 1990s, D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 213 the most influential media constituted the so-called ‘patriotic front,’ with directors and editors-in-chief loyal to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, enabling him to control over 90 percent of the media space (Mazowiecki 1994: 35). In order to understand how the logic of othering was working in dominant Serbian media, we should refer to the ideology of Christoslavism. This ideology, under which the myth of Kosovo has been shaped, was “tied to a revolutionary mixture of romantic nationalism and antiIslamic polemic” (Sells 1996: 63). Within this ideology, Prince Lazar was acclaimed for the martyrdom of the Kosovo battle, and portrayed as a Christ figure. Therefore, his enemies, the Turks and, metaphorically speaking, all Muslims, including the converts, are considered to be Christ-killers. In their version of the ‘Last Supper,’ Serbs recognized their Judas, and that was Vuk Brankovic, who betrayed Lazar and became the ancestral curse of all Muslims with Slavic origins. As an example of such ideology, Sells mentions Petar Petrovic II Njegos’ work The Mounting Wreath, known for its sub-title, The Extermination of the Turkifiers (Ajami 1996: 38). The Serbian Orthodox Church very often proclaimed the ideology of Christoslavism. Its highest authorities were very often engaged publicly in promotion of this concept (Tomanic 2001). Two salient features derived from the abovementioned ideology and re-appropriated in the dominant media discourses in Serbia are the motives of victims and the feeling of insecurity (‘Serbian people’), as well as the ‘others,’ personalized in the forms either of religious community (Muslims or Bosniaks) or of nationality (Albanians). This ideology and construction of the common enemy, different in terms of religion (Islam), ethnicity (Bosniaks) and national origin (Albanians), enabled the Serbian regime in the 90s to maintain its power, which was based exclusively on fear and uncertainty. Using the media as a tool for the cultivation of Serbian citizens, Milošević’s regime of fear misdirected information, with the intention of re-directing the audience’s attention from real problems (economic and political isolation), and focusing it on something that was not the reasons to be worried (fear of Islam, or of inner or external political enemies). Describing the role of propaganda in the Serbian regime, Podunavac refers to Tacitus’ “corrupted discourse,” known today as propaganda, and outlines the division between friend and enemy (minority vs. majority, Serbs and others, citizens and patriots, nationalists and cosmopolitans) as the basic reproductive principle of power (Podunavac 2006: 261-86). 214 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 Propaganda was directed at creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, in order to make it natural for Serbian citizens to be scared and to passivize them, making it more likely they would seek the state’s protection. On the other hand, more direct consequences of this propaganda can be observed and measured when we analyse the practices and contents of the most influential media under the regime’s control. Propaganda, used during the war(s) in former Yugoslavia, was based on the several principles: the purity of collective identities; the synergy of ethnic, religious, and national identities; the notion of ‘enemy;’ and the narrow interest of political elites. “Communities of fear were created out of a community of interests,” where ethnic hatred and fear were the result and those feelings still remain (Ignatieff 1997: 38–54). In line with the establishment of a new ideological matrix in Serbia that was nationalistic, the process of its legitimization in media took place. This undemocratic control was witnessed by the Special Reporter of the UN Commission for Human Rights Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In his report from 1994, he wrote that “information encoded by the leading media in the countries of former Yugoslavia have been created within the nationalistc discourse, where the dominant matrix of reporting contained insulting and offensive contents towards the ‘others’.” As he concluded in his report, this kind of reporting provoked terrible atrocities, and not only on the battlefield (Mazowiecki 1994: 35). Muslims, Bosniaks from BiH and Albanians from Kosovo, were portrayed as the ‘bad ones’, those who should be blamed and who deserved to be destroyed. Anti-Muslim propaganda was generated and strengthened by the Serbian media. In an orchestrated campaign, the Belgrade media persuaded the Bosnian Serbs that they were endangered by Muslims, associating Muslims with qualities such as ‘fanatics,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘extremists,’ and ‘fundamentalists.’ Sometimes, the term ‘Turks’ has been used as a derogatory term for Muslims. The reference to the Slavic Muslims as a ‘Turks’ crystallizes the view that by converting to Islam they have changed their racial identity and have become the Turks who killed the Christ-Prince Lazar (Sells 1996: 28). A very frequently repeated claim from Belgrade is that the government of BiH intends to form an Islamic fortress in the heart of Europe, aimed at blowing away the Serbs. Furthermore, they sa id, such an Islamic state would serve as a springboard for the mass migration of Muslims in Europe, so the Serbian task is dual: to defend the Serbian people and Bosnia, and also to defend Europe and Europeans from Islamization (Cekic 2005: 240). D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 215 During the Milošević trial, in May 2003, De la Brosee witnessed the media instrumentalization from the side of the Milošević regime. He claimed that Milošević directly appointed media directors and editors with an aim to ‘spread fear, to demonize Croats, Muslims and Albanians, and to create the impression that the entire world is having a kind of conspiracy against the Serbian people’. Serbian Radio-Television was on the same path. In a similar way, state TV journalists carefully and frequently used terms that provoked hatred towards the other armies, such as ‘criminals,’ ‘butchers,’ ‘Islamic Ustasha,’ ‘mujahedeen,’ ‘warriors of jihad,’ ‘terrorist group,’ ‘Muslim extremists,’ ‘Alija’s wild bunches’ ‘Islamic chauvinists,’ etc. In addition, the Army of BiH (which was the official name for the defense forces of the state of BiH during the war), was never been called by its name; the media rather titled it with various names, of which the mildest variants were ‘Muslim forces’ (where they neglected its multi-ethnic character) or ‘Green berets’ (De la Brosse 2003). Conclusion The aim of this paper has been to re-discuss the role of media in generating, spreading, and controlling fear in the public space. Two techniques or approaches have been discussed in this regard. First, the commercialization of fear as an explicit media product marketed and standardized in the way that Adorno and Horkheimer explained. Considering mass media as a factory, controlled and influenced by the capitalist elite, these authors offered a useful frame for further analysis and discussion on the media influence on its public. On the other hand, the process of ‘othering’ both reflects and initiates the power relations within a certain society, drawing the borders between the Self- and out-group. The process of stereotyping and categorization is important for this process, while the concept of hegemony understood as a constant struggle for domination in one society is useful for understanding social processes and the role of the media. The case of Serbia has demonstrated how regime-controlled media, as was the case during the 90s, are able to transform a discriminatory political agenda (in this case, of the ruling Serbian party) into a public discourse, to create a negative and stereotypic picture of Bosnian Muslims, to naturalize this picture by referring to history (usually selected, or forged through ideological lenses), and to provoke discrimination and violation. Examples of how Serbian propaganda 216 D. Marko / Southeastern Europe 37 (2013) 200–219 took place and how the process of ‘othering’ was transformed into a process of humiliation and negative stigmatization of Bosniaks, demonstrated that media language is not neutral in this sense. This corresponds with the main assumption of this paper that language is not neutral, and that its intentional use and ideological frame, under which media language is coined and shaped, are important. Politically or ethnically affiliated editorial policies, selection of terminology, portrayal and stereotypization, are the media techniques used for generating fear of the ‘others’. In that regard, van Dijk’s findings from the analysis on parliamentary debates could be applicable for media as well. As the result of his analysis, he identified several steps / actions of the strategy of ‘othering.’ The first is positive self-representation, and what follows is the negative other-presentation. The third step is the denial of racism, which van Dijk claims is necessary to ignore possible, assumed, or hidden biases and prejudices in negative speech and cognition of ‘others.’ Apparent sympathy is the next step, where the main phrase of justification could be summarized in the following sentence: ‘this is all for their own good.’ Fairness and topdown transfer (usually, transferred through the means of politically controlled media) are the next steps. And the last step is justification, which means that negative actions towards ‘others’ are justified by referring to the ‘force of facts.’ This means that the selection of negatively connoted events in the media and the use of carefully selected terminology to denote other groups are linked with ‘underlying’ attitudes and discriminatory and exclusionary use of media language (Riggins 1997: 36–41). Why is this so important? Neurologists have explained that ‘fear has been traditionally recognized as one of the fundamental forces that shape human life’ (Debiec and Le Doux 2004: 813). Hobbes claimed that fear understood as a ‘shared emotion’ could be a grounding principle of political life. Following this logic, controlling fear means having control over the ‘shared emotion’ of the population. Consequently, having control over human fear, and acting as a protector and safe-guardian, means holding power. 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