Fear, politics and the media: the discourse of fear in two presidential elections

Abstract

In this article we will examine the issue of fear, and the political use of fear, comparing two cases of such use of the strategy of fear in the political discourse of the television media, which were carried out in two different moments, in the election campaigns of the presidential elections of 2002 and 2014. In addition, we seek to relate the speech of fear in the media, the conditions of uncertainty, the pursuit of pleasure, consumption and individualism brought in post-modernity. From a criticai analysis of social conditions, it is intended to investigate how fear, potentiated by the media, is capable of producing an effect of alienation that can create a speech that ends up repeating themselves mechanically, reproducing and extending artificial concepts introduced actions socially, producing even the proliferation of prejudices, easy and stereotyped discourses.