Culture of Fear and its Impact on Political Communication in the Post-Truth Political Environment

The increasing trend of culture of fear and insecurity is influencing political decision-making process of the Western leaders since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The post-9/11 world order can be characterized by changing polarities and power competition, which may end up with officially never declared global information warfare encouraged by the advanced distribution of various transnational communication networks using techniques such as image-building, fabrication of fake news or revival of historical myths. The ideological division and widening gap between conservative and liberal parts of societies has deeply influenced Western societies in recent decades and is inclusively spreading to international relations. The impact of ongoing conservative challenge to the liberal world order has been exacerbated by powerful images often used in threat construction (e.g. Islamic terrorism, Brexit, the EU migration crisis). These images have been exploited by revisionist powers and used to impact public opinions in liberal democratic societies. Through repetitions and duplications inherent in the various kinds of media platforms, fear flows from one's life to another, justifying the greater demand for security, but may lead to contentious politics. A culture of fear is a term used in social sciences in order to describe emotional response produced by actors using fear as a political incentive, which has proved itself as an important force to justify the activities of conflicting actors and produce enmities and polarizations. Multiple agents compete on image-building by shaping popular narratives for public audience in various performative environments, the Internet and social media being among the most influential of them. Misleading new stories and the war of narratives may become an alarmingly influencing phenomenon in the so-called post-truth environment and reminds the Hobbesian concept of “war of all against all” awakened. Emotionally motivated political cultures turn to dissemination of culture of fear as the efficient way to increase their political influence. Contemporary conflict may take place in human minds and rely on virtual weapons like strong emotions manufactured and reproduced by myths and beliefs instead of actual use of violence, which has been given just a supportive role. A wide-ranging culture of fear, which weakens and destabilizes open and liberal societies, has frequently become the potential outcome of global information warfare. Methodologically, this study focuses on studying strategic narratives that may have been deliberately produced for spreading fear and misperceptions by revisionist powers as well extreme and populist movements, which are seeking the destabilization and regime change. Strategic narratives built on effectively visualized image-building are able to easily attract large audiences and impact the decision-making process of political elites. Strategic narratives can be effective tools in promoting various manifestations of psychological warfare, where the strategic objective is to create fear, which leaves the target audience physically unharmed, but emotionally distressed. The visualization of emotions has always had a certain effect on influencing public audience. The popular images which promote instability and anxiety in social discourses and relationships can find their particular way to masses accordingly to the best and most successful strategies of Hollywoodian movie industry.