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This study examined political advertisements placed by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency on Facebook and Instagram. Advertisements were computationally analyzed for four rhetorical techniques presumed to elicit anger and fear: negative identity-based language, inflammatory language, obscene language, and threatening language. Congruent with extant research on arousing emotional responses, advertising clickthrough rates were positively associated with inflammatory, obscene, and threatening language. Surprisingly, however, a negative relationship between clickthrough rate and the use of negative identity-based language was observed. Additional analyses showed that the advertisements were engaged with at rates that exceed industry benchmarks, and that clickthrough rates increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) panel data, this study explores the influence of the consumption of partisan information sources on affective polarization and investigates the mechanism underlying this relationship. The results show that exposure to pro-party television sources strengthens affective polarization among partisans. The polarizing effects of pro-party sources are mediated by the discrete negative emotions (i.e., anger and fear) toward presidential candidates. The study discusses the impact of selective exposure on deliberative and participatory democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear is a common and powerful emotion that can regulate behaviour. Yet institutional scholars have paid limited attention to the function of fear in processes of institutional reproduction and stability. Drawing on an empirical study of elite chefs within the institution of haute cuisine, this article finds that the multifaceted emotion of fear characterized their experiences and served to sustain their institution. Chefs' individual feelings of fear prompted conformity and a cognitive constriction, which narrowed their focus on to the precise reproduction of traditional practices while also limiting challenges to the norms underpinning the institution. Through fear work, chefs used threats and violence to connect individual experiences of fear to the violation of institutionalized rules, sustaining the conditions in which fear-driven maintenance work thrived. The study also suggests that fear is a normative element of haute cuisine in its own right, where the very experience and eliciting of fear preserved an essential institutional ingredient. In this way, emotions such as fear do not just accompany processes of institutionalization but can be intimately involved in the performance and maintenance of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust in many government organizations is low, creating a challenging environment for communication during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, like Ebola. In a thematic analysis of 1,010 tweets and four Twitter chats during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, we found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized organizational competence, extant protocol, and facts about transmission to manage public fear. We argue that an emphasis on certainty in a rapidly changing situation leaves organizations vulnerable to charges of unpreparedness or obfuscation. Our results also speak to the contested definition of engagement online, particularly during health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages some questions raised by recent work on civil society: What is missed by a rationalist reduction of politics, and why does it matter? How does the somatic dimension of citizenship open deliberation to social economies of power? From these questions, the article interrogates what agency is possible if power is inscribed within the affects that mobilize action and judgment- with particular attention to the work of William Connolly. Over the course of the article, it is argued that Connolly's politics of sensibility makes an ambivalent contribution to these problems. While critics charge that he undermines possibilities for associational agency, this article proposes a rather more productive contribution to the arts of coalition building. And yet, these resources must be pressed beyond recent trends in the literature if they are to do justice to the unruly movements of civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is young people's participation in the Occupy protest movement that emerged in the early autumn of 2011. Its concern is with the emotional dimensions of this and in particular the significance of emotions to the reasoning of young people who came to commit significant time and energy to the movement. Its starting point is the critique of emotions as narrowly subjective, whereby the passions that events like Occupy arouse are treated as beyond the scope of human reason. The rightful rejection of this reductionist argument has given rise to an interest in understandings of the emotional content of social and political protest as normatively constituted, but this paper seeks a different perspective by arguing that the emotions of Occupy activists can be regarded as a reasonable force. It does so by discussing findings from long-term qualitative research with a Local Occupy movement somewhere in England and Wales. Using the arguments of social realists, the paper explores this data to examine why things matter sufficiently for young people to care about them and how the emotional force that this involves constitutes an indispensable source of reason in young activists' decisions to become involved in Local Occupy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Filmmakers, sociologists, artists, philosophers, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear is a way of life, the contemporary city is seen by many to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. But while fear is seen to be so politically significant, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article, I propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear. By taking social struggles as our starting point, the city of fear becomes recognizable as a platform for social action, a place for the elaboration of a theory and practice of social change, a staging ground for the reappropriation of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To assess the effectiveness of climate change communications, it is important to examine their long-term impacts on individuals' attitudes and behavior. This article offers an example study and a discussion of the challenges of conducting long-term investigations of behavioral change related to climate change communications (a vital and underresearched area). The research reported is a longitudinal panel study of the impacts on UK viewers of the climate change movie The Age of Stupid. The heightened levels of concern, motivation to act, and sense of agency about action that were initially generated by the movie did not measurably persist over the long term. The results also show that behavioral intentions do not necessarily translate into action. Data analysis raised issues concerning the reliability of participants' causal attributions of their behavior. This and other methodological challenges are discussed, and some ways of avoiding or lessening problems are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General George S. Patton, Jr. was a highly successful World War II battle commander whose flamboyance and many idiosyncrasies made him a focus of interest for biographers. But he was an enigmatic and complex man whose success came at a high price. Despite his prominence and celebrity, there have been minimal efforts to examine his psychological makeup so crucial to his success on the battlefield. In this essay, Patton's personal story and how it relates to the stresses of war and to his leadership of men in arms is examined. Central to his success was his early triumph over dyslexia, his ability to control the fear and guilt inherent in combat, his intense physical activity, his theatrical skills, and his deep knowledge of the history and methods of warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial literature on how fears of Other populations are prompting the increased surveillance and regulation of public spaces at the heart of Western cities. Yet, in contrast to the consumer-oriented spaces of the city centre, there has been relatively little attention devoted to the quality of the street spaces in residential neighbourhoods beyond the central city. In this article, we explore how media representations of sex workers as an abject and criminalized Other inform the reactions of residents to street sex work in such communities. Drawing on our work in a number of British cities we highlight the different degrees of tolerance which residents express towards street sex work. In light of the Home Office strategy document, A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy, this article concludes by advocating participatory action research and community conferencing as a means of resolving conflicts and assuaging fears of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image of schooling tends to be benign, lulling parents and guardians into an assumption of safety for at least 6 hours each weekday. The complement to safety as an imagined state of schooling contains incidents of school violence and tragedy that feed communities' and parents' primeval fears about the well being of their children. The consequences of imagined safety, along with panic resulting from incidents of school violence or other lapses in school safety, yield school policies and rules that, perversely, may exacerbate community fears. Under the 2001 federal law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the consequences of a public accounting for school safety may have generated more opportunities for public fear and panic as opposed to increasing conditions for school safety and security. The article concludes with strategies, rather than the blunt legislative approach to policies, for mediating public fears by ensuring genuine school safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Recent media coverage of isolated acts of violence committed by students on school property has increased concern about school violence. Reports documenting higher levels of school violence in the face of a general decline in crime rates, together with several high-profile cases, have resulted in a reactive preventive security response. Congress has passed several initiatives aimed at reducing levels of school violence. Gangs and gang activity within our nation's schools are often linked to increased levels of school violence, but little explanation has been offered for this increase. Greater security measures have been taken by school administrations in response to the problem, and, while these may reduce levels of school violence in some communities, they can also help to perpetuate a culture of fear that has been created by intense media coverage of such violence. The presence of security officers, metal detectors, and security cameras may deter some students from committing acts of violence, but this presence also serves to heighten fear among students and teachers, while increasing the power of some gangs and the perceived need some students have for joining gangs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study on the social aspects of fear. Methodology of the study; Discussion on the psychological basis of fear; Results of the study.

Investigates the fears in children of low socioeconomic status family (SES) and of non-Anglo ethnic background. Effects of SES on intensity or types of children's fears; Differences in fear content between African American children and Anglo children; Items with highest fear intensity rating by gender, socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity.

Argues that the fear-risk paradox can be resolved theoretically by placing an anxious, defended subject rather than a rational, risk-avoiding one at the center of the debate. Methodological implications of the study; Outline of the principles of the biographical-interpretative method and the importance of eliciting concrete stories.

Examines the mythic figure of the vampire and metaphors of blood and heart thievery during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Africa and the island of Madagascar. Analogy to Africans' expression of the reality of conquest, enslavement and resource extraction; Identification of Catholic priests with heart thieves and vampires; Cult of the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist.