Alarmism
Alarmism is a political catchphrase used to designate or claim an unnecessary or exaggerated warning of problems. Anyone who uses the term usually expresses judgmentally that he does not share the warnings and fears or considers them to be extremely exaggerated. The term also found its way into media criticism .
Origin and meaning of the term
The term is a neologism derived from English in the early 1990s . According to Duden, an "alarmist" is on the one hand a "noise maker" or a "troublemaker" (this meaning is "educationally outdated"), on the other hand "someone who draws public attention to something threatening, dangerous, who warns of something". Whether the threat actually exists and to the extent described is irrelevant for the use of the catchphrase. A term with a similar meaning is the colloquial derogatory term "scaremongering", which, according to Duden , denotes "conjuring up a panic mood through the exaggerated presentation of a situation or the like". In public and political discussions, the accusation of alarmism is also used as a red herring to avoid a differentiated discussion of a topic.
Media criticism
In media criticism , the handling of many publicly discussed problems is sometimes referred to as "alarmist". In particular, it tries to capture a tendency, especially in the tabloid press, to present "current events, political positions or general trends as warnings about undesirable future developments". In this way, "changes and changes would be identified as dramatically dangerous developments that require urgent action". The "drastic" of some portrayals indicate a "deeper strategy of dramatizing possible social developments". The alarmism "a discourse pattern that can be demonstrated in the media and scientific debate and the view of the possibilities and limits of political influence" rather obscures. Historically, there are "a number of examples of hysterical fear epidemics, which can sometimes be traced back to a 'catastrophic attitude towards life' based on fearfulness ".
Attempts to explain
The publicist Matthias Horx tried to define alarmism in 2007 as follows: “By alarmism we understand a sociocultural phenomenon in which fears of the future are rampant in large sections of the population like an epidemic. These fears arise from a certain interpretation of dangerous moments, which may well have real origins (or partial aspects). However, these dangers are symbolically exaggerated and reduced to a simplified, catastrophic model ”( Horx 2007, p. 24 ). According to the publicist Friedrich Sieburg , the catastrophic attitude towards life is based on a psychological “ lust for fear ”: “ To raise the doomsday mood through sharp analyzes in the general consciousness and at the same time to enjoy it is one of the favorite pastimes of people today.” Everyday life too his dreary problems are boring, but impending disasters are extremely interesting.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dieter Herberg, Michael Kinne and Doris Steffens: New vocabulary: Neologisms of the 90s in German . In: Writings of the Institute for German Language . De Gruyter, 2004, ISBN 3-11-017751-X , p. 5-6 . online in google books
- ↑ Alarmist in duden.de, accessed on January 13, 2013
- ↑ Scare-mongering in duden.de, accessed on August 1, 2013
- ↑ Heinz-Hermann Meyer: Alarmismus , Lexicon of Filmbegriffe from the Institute for Modern German Literature and Media at the University of Kiel , accessed on August 1, 2013
- ↑ quoted in Thomas Jäger and Henrike Viehrig: Security and Media , Springer 2009, p 165, online on Google Books
- ^ F. Sieburg (1957) quoted from: Klaus Harpprecht , Untergang des Abendlandes? What nonsense! , in: Die Zeit No. 25/2006, from June 14, 2006.
