Surveillance Culture
"Sinclair observes here a significant and politically troubling move in the
watchful politics of the war on terror: the suturing together of people’s fears,
suspicions and everyday visuality with ‘mobile screenic devices’" (Amoore, 220).
The constant regurgitation of the bad things that happen by the media enforce the selling of fear and comfort culture. Since the vast majority of people, especially now, have smartphones and can access the internet whenever they want, when the media continuously replays events, such as 9/11, the population will start making connections, albeit wrong ones a lot of the times, regarding tragic events and its perpetrators and placing those stereotypes on an entire group of people. However, there is some truth and psychology behind stereotypes. Stereotypes, when talked about in psychology, do not take on a bad connotation like it does in everyday talk. Stereotypes allow the human brain to react to situations more quickly, albeit less accurate, thus increasing chance of survival. Furthermore, it would've been the act of stereotyping that might have prevented the tragedy in the first place. There was a documentary that aired, though I don't remember when, that interviewed some of the people that worked in the airport. What some of the workers said have stuck with me for years. They said stuff along the lines of this: "When we saw the gentlemen come and walk around in the airport, we knew something was off. They seemed extremely angry and agitated. They definitely were not happy fliers". One guy said that they looked at him and that they had a look of pure evil and disgust on their faces. In that instance, the act of stereotyping, or more accurately, assessing a situation correctly instead of being afraid of not being politically correct, then the tragedy we know as 9/11 may have never happened. It could have been prevented.
But Sinclair makes a good point, this constant reference to tragic events do play on people's fear, thus contributing to the fear and comfort culture we find ourselves in. There's another psychological phenomenon that explains how this happens and its called confirmation bias. What that means is that a person will look for information that fits their current thinking, biases, situations, regardless of competing evidence, and will use that as a means to justify their thoughts. For example, if I thought 2+2=5, and I found "evidence" for that to be true, regardless of the countless number of evidence that proves otherwise, the evidence that supports my thinking has got to be right. So think about it in terms of what is being stated above. If you take a tragic event, like 9/11, and continuously replay it on the screens of Americans, and continuously show the hijakers and what they look like, people will start to aliken anyone who looks like them as people like them, people that mean harm. Then, to further that belief, supported by media coverage of any big terrorist attack in recent years, then the publics views and stereotypes will further be enforced and it is a continuous cycle.
The constant regurgitation of the bad things that happen by the media enforce the selling of fear and comfort culture. Since the vast majority of people, especially now, have smartphones and can access the internet whenever they want, when the media continuously replays events, such as 9/11, the population will start making connections, albeit wrong ones a lot of the times, regarding tragic events and its perpetrators and placing those stereotypes on an entire group of people. However, there is some truth and psychology behind stereotypes. Stereotypes, when talked about in psychology, do not take on a bad connotation like it does in everyday talk. Stereotypes allow the human brain to react to situations more quickly, albeit less accurate, thus increasing chance of survival. Furthermore, it would've been the act of stereotyping that might have prevented the tragedy in the first place. There was a documentary that aired, though I don't remember when, that interviewed some of the people that worked in the airport. What some of the workers said have stuck with me for years. They said stuff along the lines of this: "When we saw the gentlemen come and walk around in the airport, we knew something was off. They seemed extremely angry and agitated. They definitely were not happy fliers". One guy said that they looked at him and that they had a look of pure evil and disgust on their faces. In that instance, the act of stereotyping, or more accurately, assessing a situation correctly instead of being afraid of not being politically correct, then the tragedy we know as 9/11 may have never happened. It could have been prevented.
But Sinclair makes a good point, this constant reference to tragic events do play on people's fear, thus contributing to the fear and comfort culture we find ourselves in. There's another psychological phenomenon that explains how this happens and its called confirmation bias. What that means is that a person will look for information that fits their current thinking, biases, situations, regardless of competing evidence, and will use that as a means to justify their thoughts. For example, if I thought 2+2=5, and I found "evidence" for that to be true, regardless of the countless number of evidence that proves otherwise, the evidence that supports my thinking has got to be right. So think about it in terms of what is being stated above. If you take a tragic event, like 9/11, and continuously replay it on the screens of Americans, and continuously show the hijakers and what they look like, people will start to aliken anyone who looks like them as people like them, people that mean harm. Then, to further that belief, supported by media coverage of any big terrorist attack in recent years, then the publics views and stereotypes will further be enforced and it is a continuous cycle.
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