|
Alarmism
Alarmism is excessive or exaggerated alarm of a real or imagined threat. Alarmism connotes attempts to excite fears or giving warnings of great danger in a manner that is amplified, overemphasized or unwarranted. In the news media, alarmism can often be found in the form of yellow journalism where reports sensationalise a story to exaggerate small risks. Alarmist personality The alarmist person is subject to the cognitive distortion of catastrophizingof always expecting the worst of possible futures. They may also be seeking to preserve feelings of omnipotence Omnipotence is the property of possessing maximal power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as ... by trying to generate anxiety, apprehension and concern in others.T. Pitt-Aikens, ''Loss of the Good Authority'' (1989) p. 99 See also References Prediction Media m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sky Is Falling (fable)
"Henny Penny", more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" and sometimes as "Chicken Licken", is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries, and "Henny Penny" continues to be referred to in a variety of media. The story and its name The story is listed as Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index type 20C, which includes international examples of folktales that make light of paranoia and mass hysteria. There are several Western versions of the story, of which the best-known concerns a chick which believes that the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the king and, on its journey, meets other animals which join it in the quest. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'' and glossed by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved. Fable The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly fools villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town's flock. When an actual wolf appears and the boy calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In a later English-language poetic version of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in ''Fables for '' (1830) by John Hookham Frere, in William Ellery Leonard's ''Aesop & Hyssop'' (1912), and in Louis Untermeyer's 1965 poem. The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climate Alarmism
Media coverage of climate change has had effects on public opinion on climate change, as it conveys the scientific consensus on climate change that the global temperature has increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate change communication research shows that coverage has grown and become more accurate. Some researchers and journalists believe that media coverage of politics of climate change is adequate and fair, while a few feel that it is biased. History The theory that increases in greenhouse gases would lead to an increase in temperature was first proposed by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, but climate change did not arise as a political issue until the 1990s. It took many years for this particular issue to attract any type of popular attention. In the United States, the mass media devoted little coverage to global warming until the drought of 1988, and James E. Hansen's testimony to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exaggerated
Exaggeration is the representation of something as more extreme or dramatic than it is, intentionally or unintentionally. It can be a rhetorical device or figure of speech, used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression. Amplifying achievements, obstacles and problems to attention seeking, seek attention is an everyday occurrence Inflating the difficulty of achieving a goal after attaining it, can be used to bolster self-esteem. In the arts, exaggerations are used to create emphasis or effect. As a literary device, exaggerations are often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. Many times the usages of hyperbole describes something as better or worse than it really is. An example of hyperbole is: "The bag weighed a ton." Hyperbole makes the point that the bag was very heavy, though it probably does not weigh a ton. Exaggerating is also a type of Deception#Types, deception,Guerrero, L., Anderson, P., Afifi, W. (2007). Close Encounters: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
False Alarm
A false alarm, also called a nuisance alarm, is the deceptive or erroneous report of an emergency, causing unnecessary panic and/or bringing resources (such as emergency services) to a place where they are not needed. False alarms may occur with residential burglary alarms, smoke detectors, industrial alarms, fire alarms and in signal detection theory. False alarms have the potential to divert emergency responders away from legitimate emergencies, which could ultimately lead to loss of life. In some cases, repeated false alarms in a certain area may cause occupants to develop alarm fatigue and to start ignoring most alarms, knowing that each time it will probably be false. Intentionally falsely activating alarms in businesses and schools can lead to serious disciplinary actions, and criminal penalties such as fines and jail time. Overview The term "false alarm" refers to alarm systems in many different applications being triggered by something other than the expected trigger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prediction
A prediction (Latin ''præ-'', "before," and ''dictum'', "something said") or forecast is a statement about a future event or about future data. Predictions are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge of forecasters. There is no universal agreement about the exact difference between "prediction" and " estimation"; different authors and disciplines ascribe different connotations. Future events are necessarily uncertain, so guaranteed accurate information about the future is impossible. Prediction can be useful to assist in making plans about possible developments. Opinion In a non-statistical sense, the term "prediction" is often used to refer to an informed guess or opinion. A prediction of this kind might be informed by a predicting person's abductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and experience; and may be useful—if the predicting person is a knowledgeable person in the field. The Delphi method is a technique for elicitin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conspiracy Theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * * * * The term generally has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal of a conspiracy theory is based in prejudice, emotional conviction, or insufficient evidence. A conspiracy theory is distinct from a conspiracy; it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy with specific characteristics, including but not limited to opposition to the mainstream consensus among those who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy, such as scientists or historians. Conspiracy theories tend to be internally consistent and correlate with each other; they are generally designed to resist falsification either by evidence against them or a lack of evidence for them. They are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy ''and'' absenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Safety Culture
Safety culture is the element of organizational culture which is concerned with the maintenance of safety and compliance with safety standards. It is informed by the organization's leadership and the beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to risks within the organization, workplace or community. Safety culture has been described in a variety of ways: notably, the National Academies of Science and the Association of Land Grant and Public Universities have published summaries on this topic in 2014 and 2016. A good safety culture can be promoted by senior management commitment to safety, realistic practices for handling hazards, continuous organisational learning, and care and concern for hazards shared across the workforce. Beyond organisational learning, individual training forms the foundation from which to build a systemic safety culture. History The Chernobyl disaster highlighted the importance of safety culture and the effect of managerial and hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology Of Disaster
Sociology of disaster or sociological disaster research is a sub-field of sociology that explores the social relations amongst both natural and human-made disasters. Its scope includes local, national, and global disasters - highlighting these as distinct events that are connected by people through created displacement, trauma, and loss. These connections, whether that is as a survivor, working in Emergency management, disaster management, or as a perpetrator role, is non-discrete and a complex experience that is sought to be understood through this sub-field. Interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinary in nature, the field is closely linked with environmental sociology and sociocultural anthropology. Overview Many studies in the field of sociology of disaster focus on the link between social solidarity and the vulnerabilities exposed by disasters. Scholarship in this field has observed how such events can produce both social solidarity and social conflict, and more importantly, expo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scaremongering
Fearmongering, or scaremongering, is the act of exploiting feelings of fear by using exaggerated rumors of impending danger, usually for personal gain. Theory According to evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary biology, humans have a strong impulse to pay attention to danger because awareness of dangers has been important for survival throughout their evolutionary history. The effect is amplified by cultural evolution when the news media cater to people's appetite for news about dangers. The attention of citizens is a fiercely contested resource that news media, political campaigners, reform movement, social reformers, advertising, advertisers, non-governmental organization, civil society organizations, missionary, missionaries, and cultural event management, event makers compete over, according to attention economy. Agency (sociology), Social agents of all kinds are often using fearmongering as a tactic in the competition for attention, as illustrated by the examples below. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Panic
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community. Stanley Cohen, who developed the term, states that moral panic happens when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests". While the issues identified may be real, the claims "exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality and/or inevitability of harm". Moral panics are now studied in sociology and criminology, media studies, and cultural studies. It is often academically considered irrational (see Cohen's model of moral panic, below). Examples of moral panic include the belief in widespread abduction of c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Hysteria
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for contagion. It is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic causes that are known. Signs and symptoms Timothy F. Jones of the Tennessee Department of Health compiled the following symptoms based on their commonality in outbreaks occurring in 1980–1990: Jones, Timothy. "Mass Psychogenic Illness: Role of the Individual Physician." ''American Family Physician.'' America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
