Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

David L. Altheide
School of Justice and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0403, USA

The role of mediated communication and media logic in social order is discussed, along with
recent examples involving social media and popular culture, surveillance, commercialism
and marketing, social change and revolution, and military strategies and weapon systems.
The relevance of an ecology of communication—the structure, organization, and accessi-
bility of information technology, various forums, media, and channels of information—is
proposed as a template for inspecting the interaction of social context, information technol-
ogy, communication formats, and how these affect social activities. Suggestions are offered
for continued investigation and mapping of media logic across information technologies in
order to clarify the reflexive relationship between communication, social interaction, and
institutional orders.

doi:10.1111/comt.12017

I welcome the opportunity to engage colleagues about a maturing conception of

social mediation. Our expanding mediated world, dominated by media logic and
institutional formats of social control, is inextricably tied to everyday life routines and
language of our increasingly mediated (or mediatized) social order. As noted in several
books and dozens of articles over the past 3 decades, social order is a communicated
order, and the rules and logics of the underlying formats of communication have
reshaped many activities, and have initiated numerous others. This essay provides
a few conceptual refinements to the comprehensive theory of media logic and
social change that we set forth over 3 decades ago. Notwithstanding the widespread
professional inclusion of this basic statement on mediation, there remains some
confusion about the nature, extent, and appropriateness for new technologies and
communication formats. Part of this confusion may be due to inattention to later
work on an ‘‘ecology of communication,’’ and especially the power of emerging
communication formats that accompanied new technologies. Hopefully, this essay
will illuminate shadowy conceptual connections that may be useful in the ongoing
emergence of approaches to our mediated world. Following an overview of a general
theory of mediation, the relevance for social control will be illustrated with a brief
discussion of the escalation of fear.

Corresponding author: David L. Altheide; e-mail: david.altheide@asu.edu

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Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear D. L. Altheide

Media logic in context

Claims about the role of media technologies and communication formats in shaping
the reflexive nature of communication and social action are far more acceptable
today than when Robert Snow and I published Media Logic (Altheide & Snow,
1979). We focused on media-related changes in the institutional order—news,
politics, religion, sport—and how people involved in those institutions (e.g., fans
in sports) soon came to expect heightened action and visual emphasis, even in the
sports venues. We encouraged more research on the underlying media logic that was
rapidly changing social life:
We wish to end our discussion as a starting point. Whereas Karl Mannheim
(Mannheim, Wirth, & Shills, 1936) alerted us to the significance of political
ideology and utopian thought as forms through which knowledge was
constructed, we urge researchers to recognize the role of a highly rational and
bureaucratized media logic in transforming and shaping the meanings of
knowledge of social institutions, including politics. We believe this approach will
not only demystify and delegitimize the media culture being produced, but will
once gain elevate relevant decisions to the respective institutional arenas.
(Altheide & Snow, 1979, p. 247)
Our aim in that basic work was to provide a theoretical perspective, grounded
in the reflexive character of communication that would join social interaction
with institutional forms and social changes. The reflexive turn in social science,
including cultural studies and communication studies—especially qualitative
research methodology—(Hall, 1977) certainly contributed to the acceptance of the
perspective (Altheide, 2003; Altheide, 2008; Altheide & Johnson, 1994; Clifford &
Marcus, 1986; Couch, Maines, & Chen, 1996; Couldry, 2008; Denzin & Lincoln,
1994, 2011; Ferrell & Sanders, 1995; Furedi, 1997; McDonald, 1994; Sudnow, 1971).
Much of the published work concerning media logic during the past 3 decades
has been informed by a symbolic interactionist perspective on the nature of meaning
and the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Blumer, 1962;
Couch et al., 1996). The nature, process and significance of the definition of the
situation is paramount to this approach; indeed, power is the ability to define a
situation, and the interaction and communication which helps accomplish and enact
definitions are crucial to social order, social reality, and social change. Media logic
reflexively shapes interaction process, routines, and institutional orders; everyday
life and institutional orders reflect and reify a communication order operating with
media logic. (Farre Coma, 2005a, 2005b; Horlick-Jones & Fare Coma, 2010).
Several of these basic points have been widely discussed during the past few
decades, especially the nature of media logic (Mazzoleni, 2008; Stromback, 2008).
Indeed, much has been written about the merits of using ‘‘mediation’’ or ‘‘mediation’’
or ‘‘mediatization,’’ as well as ‘‘mediatric.’’ Some scholars have argued that there are
many ‘‘logics’’ and not just one (Friesen, 2009; Hepp, 2012; Livingstone, 2009; Lundby,

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D. L. Altheide Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

2009); of course, the specific applications will vary, but there appears to be a basic
underlying conceptual logic. Clearly, the technological media per se are not the sole
explanation of social change and conduct. Simply channeling—or even shaping—
some content is not sufficient for a thorough-going theory of mediation. Aspects of
that logic must be examined in the context of various media across a range of issues.
Couch’s work (Couch 1984, 1990) is particularly cogent for any theory of mediation.
I advance the proposition that the relationship between the media and social
structures are multilateral; that the consequences of a medium are different
when it is contextualized by economic structures than when contextualized by
state structures . . . [when the latter] it will reflect the interests of state officials
(Couch, 1990, p. 112).
This is why empirical and conceptual mapping, tracking, incorporation, and
transformation of organizational and interactional communication must occur
across media and topics. Some work has been done along these lines, but much of it
has not been systematically examined and critiqued by students of mediation.
Perhaps some of the confusion about the nature of media logic might be due to
a lack of familiarity with subsequent works that examined in more detail the nature
of media culture, social power (Altheide, 1984, 1985), a communication ecology
(Altheide, 1995) and specific institutional effects on journalism, and social control
(Altheide, 1994, 2002a, 2006, 2009; Altheide & Coyle, 2006; Altheide & DeVriese,
2007; Altheide & Grimes, 2005).1
The basic argument is still relevant for our rapidly changing world, although the
advent of relatively new technologies has expanded and complicated the emergence
of new mediated forms. Media logic and an interest in mediation has accompa-
nied the widespread expansion and use of the Internet, cell phones—and ‘‘smart
phones’’—social media, and the surveillance applications of each of these for an
increase in mediated social control as well as promotion of fear.
My interest is with media logic as a feature of mediation. While these may vary
across media—mainly due to formats of operation and control—the conceptual logic
remains. Media logic is defined as a form of communication, and the process through
which media transmit and communicate information. Media logic is relevant when
events, action, and actors’ performances reflect information technologies, specific
media, and formats that govern communication. The key element of a thoroughgoing
theory of mediation built on media logic is that the institutional media forms not
only help shape and guide content and numerous everyday life activities, but also
that audiences-as-actors normalize these forms and use them as reality maintenance
tools.
Media logic is the broad theoretical construct, while ecology of communication
is more specified about the interplay among social activities, social change, and
social organization and activities. Social order is increasingly mediated, which simply
means that social action is shaped and informed by media technologies and the logics
that orient behavior and perceptions. Elements of media logic include the distinctive

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features of each medium (e.g., newspapers, Internet, blogs) and the formats used
by these media for the organization, the style in which it is presented, the focus
or emphasis on particular characteristics of behavior, and the grammar of media
communication (Altheide & Snow, 1979; Snow, 1983). Formats are the way that
communication is organized, and selected, presented, and ultimately, recognized and
used by audiences (e.g., drama, visualization, brief encapsulation, narrative form,
and development that have been refined along media terms).
Formats reflect technologies, contexts, substantive, and procedural familiarity
and intended audiences. Formats are part of an ecology of communication (ECO-
COM) which refers to the structure, organization, and accessibility of information
technology, various forums, media, and channels of information. ECOCOM provides
a conceptualization and perspective that joins information technology and commu-
nication (media) formats with the time and place of activities. The basic argument is
that information technology, communication formats, and many social activities are
reflexively linked. This suggests that many social activities and behavioral changes
resonate communication and information technologies.
Integrating our earlier work with more recent efforts to refine conceptually
the broad area of mediation suggests the following: A medium can be conceived
as any social or technological procedure or device that is used for the selection,
transmission, and reception of information. Mediation refers to the impact of media
logic and form of any medium involved in the communication process that is part of
an ecology of communication that joins information technology and communication
(media) formats with the time and place of activities. Mediatization may be regarded
as the process by which this takes place, including the institutionalization and
blending of media forms.
I wish to stress that social institutions are infused with media considerations;
institutional contexts, particularly the constitution and use of social power, are
enacted through media technologies and perspectives. Snow’s analysis of ‘‘media
culture’’ (1983), and the entertainment format emphasizes features that are relevant
for mass media as well as social media: First, there is an absence of the ordinary;
second, is the openness of an adventure, outside the boundaries of routine behavior;
third, the audience member is willing to suspend disbelief. In addition, while the
exact outcome may be in doubt, there is a clear and unambiguous point at which it
will be resolved. In the case of television, packaging such emphases within formats
that are visual, brief, action-oriented, and dramatic produces an exciting and familiar
tempo to audiences. This logic or the rationale, emphasis, and orientation promoted
by media production, processes, and messages—tends to be evocative, encapsulated,
highly thematic, familiar to audiences, and easy to use, especially as audiences spend
more time with these formats. Thus, the logic of advertising, entertainment, and
popular culture becomes taken-for-granted as a ‘‘normal form’’ of communication.
This includes the audience, for electronic media—or the ‘‘E Audience’’ (Altheide,
2002b)—as well as social media, which are oriented to incessant, pervasive, and
interactive communication (Adolf & Wallner, 2011; Carr, 2012; Castelló, Dhoest,

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D. L. Altheide Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

& O’Donnell, 2009; Lewin, 2010; Notley, 2008; Papacharissi, 2002; Schneider, 2011;
Schneider & Trottier, 2012; Sheridan, 2011; Surratt, 2001).
Changes in major television newswork in the United States and many European
countries provide an apt example of adjusting and changing to accommodate new
information technology and media formats as suggested by ecology of communication
framework. Historically, TV networks have been reluctant to use visual or video
materials from other than news organizations. The advent of YouTube on the Inter-
net, as well as ‘‘smart phones’’ with video capability changed this. It is now common
for networks to use videos captured on smart phones and placed on YouTube for
widespread viewing. This practice has become so widespread that news organizations
increasingly rely on extraorganizational visual sources of information, but have
actually promoted audience participation as ‘‘citizen journalists.’’ The mix of enter-
tainment and news has gone well beyond ‘‘infotainment,’’ but is now adjusted to the
use of social media, especially by younger people. The networks select YouTube videos
based on the number of video’s viewers; typically, these are entertaining and human
interest visuals, often involving dogs doing tricks or just being ‘‘cute puppies’’ playing.
This is more than a shift to ‘‘feel good’’ news, but is quite consistent with mediated
technological adjustments that have provided blended information for viewers, who
are increasingly participants or interactants in a social setting, especially if they can
gain social capital by sharing information through their own networks. Shifts in net-
work news are quite consistent with the innovative blogosphere, where entrepreneurs
hone in on the way that audiences use information—all kinds, from serious to humor.
One example is BuzzFeed, an innovative Web site that integrates news and entertain-
ment. An interview with the web developer illustrates how information technology
and communication formats has transformed information seeking—including the
search for the latest news—into connected social interaction with social media.
BuzzFeed is a natural response to a changing ecosystem.
As the world has realigned from being about portals and then search and now
social, how do you build a media company for a social world?’ he said. ’And a big
part of that is scoops and exclusives and original content, and it’s also about cute
kittens in an entertaining cultural context.

As the consumer Web has matured, readers have become minipublishers, using
social media platforms to share information they think will entertain and
enlighten their friends. No longer is it just about so-called sticky content that
keeps readers around, or even clicky content that causes them to hit a link; it’s
also about serving up content that is spreadable. Hit the right note, and your
readers become like bees, stopping by your site to grab links and heading back
out on the Web to pollinate other platforms. That behavior has tapped into
something visceral, a kind of game in which the person finding something
delicious gains social capital for sharing it . . . Mr. Peretti already had a team of
editors who knew how to take commodity content and refashion it into

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something new, but he wanted more. News is the killer app, and does not
depend on search optimization . . .

So now Mr. Peretti has high and low, news and fun, all ready for sharing.
‘‘People are now used to having everything mixed together in a Facebook
newsfeed,’’ Mr. Peretti said. ‘‘A story about the Arab Spring will be next to a
picture of your sister’s new baby. Why not have a publishing site that embraces
those colliding worlds?’’

Social control and mediation

New technologies reflect, refine, and contribute to negotiating social interaction
within institutionally mediated contexts. New technologies and formats have altered
the communication order, while expanding surveillance, even as everyday life
activities integrate media forms. The pervasive role of mediation has increased
surveillance and provided more technology for preventing and constructing fear, on
the one hand, and enabled creative resistance to symbolic presentations of resistance
to such control efforts, on the other hand. Agents of change often these information
technologies and communication formats into account in planning and activities. It
is widely acknowledged that social media helped organize protesters in Cairo in the
Egyptian revolt in January 2011.
Al Jazeera, recognized as an important alternative media in the Middle East, was
attacked by the Egyptian government, but it continued to broadcast. Social media
use and effectiveness, as suggested by an earlier quote from Carl Couch, varies by
social and political contexts. Especially noteworthy is the statement by Al Jazeera’s
Director General:
‘‘In my opinion, this is a new ecosystem emerging in media, between the
so-called traditional media and the new media.’’ . . . And this new ecosystem is
not based on competition and who is going to win, it’s based on complementing
each other (Stelter, 2011).
Ironically, the media get mediated to adjust to social and political contexts. Of
course, not all countries in the Middle East were as easily moved by social media;
this was also true of some change advocates’ experiences in other countries (e.g.,
China).2 Political opposition may even attempt to shut down social media, and in
some instances, actually plant false information via twitter or Facebook in order to
disrupt protests or ensnare political organizers.
Computer games illustrate how information technology and communication
formats can alter behavior and even produce new approaches to mediatized social
control. Computer games are one of the purest examples of the process of media
logic and an ecology of communication perspective. Even a partial mapping of the
discursive logic, procedures, technological developments, applications, and cultural
rationales of the transition from keyboard formats and rationality to computer

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D. L. Altheide Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

gaming incorporating sharper imagery illustrates the emergence of a cultural format

of control that transforms virtual reality into real death. Der Derian put it this way:
‘‘What happens when . . . what one technologically can do comes to dominate what
one legally, ethically, or even pragmatically should do?’’ (2001, p. 216).
Combining keyboard rationality that was reflexive of superchip manufacturing
for expanding gaming markets was cleverly wedded to cultural narratives of good
versus evil, fear, crime, conflict, racism, exploitation, and violence. This is just
the gaming industry. Numerous analysts of gaming have noted how the social
construction and imagery of the dramatization of evil resonates with classical and
more modern heroic action, including the use of sophisticated weapons in situ of the
games themselves. Even the extremely lucrative massive player Internet games (e.g.,
EverQuest) focused on simple justice—usually violence—carried out by raiding
teams that reflected conventional racial and gender hierarchies. As one exhaustive
study of online gaming notes:
Outside the tranquility of this astral oasis an unending war rages. The heroes and
champions of this world, the digital embodiments of real world users, gamers,
engage in an endless series of skirmishes and battles as they venture past the
edges of the known world into those murky wilds on the periphery of the map,
the kinds of places where foreboding cartographers leave warnings: ‘Here be
dragons.’ [ . . . ] Here, players are the right. They are action, dynamism. They are
power. Play in EverQuest has become a coming of age narrative with strong
technocratic undertones, a Nietzschean tale of the will to power. Here, we are the
Übermensch. Here, we are beyond good and evil. (Rowlands, 2010, p. 4).
Gaming is attractive to military recruiters, trainers, tacticians, and weapon system
developers because it is relatively inexpensive and is culturally embedded. Typical
computer games focus on shorter time frames and clear ways of keeping score. The
skills required can be quickly acquired and demonstrated. And the basic platforms of
the games can be fairly easily adapted for new, but familiar scenarios.
For instance, in the mid-1990s, some Marines tinkered with the popular Doom
video game, replacing fantasy weapons with real ones and monsters with soldiers.
A few years later, the military collaborated with academia and game developers
to create Full Spectrum Warrior, which was designed to mimic combat.

Virtual training will never replace the live training that is still so essential,
military officials said. But it allows soldiers to practice many times without the
expense of big equipment or the risk of using live ammunition (Martin & Linn,
2011).

Using similar technology as video games, drone pilots sit in air-conditioned

rooms along with a spotter and view video screens and review satellite transmitted
images from drone cameras. CIA-drone pilots are dressed as civilians, while the
official military drivers wear uniforms. Upon confirming the target, they stroke the

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deadly buttons, things blow up, and people die. Like thousands of office workers,
after finishing their shifts they drive home to their families. Except they do see the
aftermath of the explosions and the body parts, and for some, this imagery lingers and
causes some psychological stresses, including posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

Working in air-conditioned trailers, Predator pilots observe the field of battle

through a bank of video screens and kill enemy fighters with a few computer
keystrokes. Then, after their shifts are over, they get to drive home and sleep in
their own beds. Remote-control warriors suffer war stress; Predator operators
prone to psychological trauma as battlefield comrades. (The Associated Press,
2008)
The satellites that are central to deadly drones provide ‘‘triangulated’’ positioning,
but they also provide visuals. Visual technologies, including less expensive and
more powerful cameras and lenses, have spawned a massive surveillance industry
that plays on news reports of crime and mayhem; this discourse of fear, or the
pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and
risk are a central feature of everyday life, has sustained a questionable view that
more information—surveillance—is necessary to keep us safe, and the ultimate
information is real-time video images, as well as bodily surveillance technologies
(e.g., drug testing) that can monitor what is ingested in private (Monahan, 2006;
Staples, 2000). These technologies, which are often developed and justified for one
purpose—such as fighting terrorism—can also be used in other ways. For example,
the information technology in the hands of police can meld surveillance formats
to develop other activities. Technologies developed to fight terrorism in the United
States were geared to collecting indiscriminate massive information such as license
plates on cars. When not faced with many discernible terrorist threats, New York
City police shifted their emphasis to street crime.
As suggested by the guidelines of an ecology of communication, new media can
be adapted to established media through new formats. Advertising and entertain-
ment, including news programming, illustrate how innovative forms of corporate
commodification involve media recirculation of other media images (Kellner, 2004;
Stehr, 2008). McDonald’s illustrates how advertisers use media formats to promote
emotional attachment to a product/brand. Consider this example of how a child,
Lesly Lopez, played a computer game for fun, even as she unwittingly recruited her
cousin to participate in what is now referred to as ‘‘engagement-based marketing’’:
McWorld prompts children to enter codes from Happy Meal boxes to unlock
things like special gear for their online avatars . . . As ten year old Lesly Lopez
dropped an onscreen bee into a cartoon that she was creating as part of a
computer game, Create a Comic, she was also part of a marketing exercise
produced, packaged and monitored by General Mills. ‘‘I always send them to my
cousin in Los Angeles,’’ she said . . . A spokesperson explained that companies
are realizing that, when going online, the best strategy is to forgo immediate sales

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in order to build lasting emotional relationships with children . . . French fries,

hamburgers and apple pies are nowhere to be seen. This is the latest in online
marketing, where the hope is that a site’s visitor will naturally associate the brand
with a pleasurable activity. It is a type of advertising that has less in common
with a 30-second television spot than with a product placement in a movie . . .
(Brustein, 2011)
Children visiting McDonald’s restaurants are not the only ones who like to
have fun eating and playing. Self-presentation and social control performances and
representations pervade the Internet and social media. Social media illustrate how
one of the most notable impacts of media logic has been an emphasis on dramaturgy
and self-presentation for publicity purposes. Bloggers, entertainers, exhibitionists,
and social control agencies (e.g., police departments) ride the Internet (e.g., YouTube,
Facebook) to step forth and proclaim their insights and political views, just as it has
become a viable news source for traditional print and electronic media. This includes
not just the conventional mass media—newspapers, radio, and television—but also
the emergent ‘‘social media,’’ involving interactive formats like Facebook, but also
‘‘Twitter,’’ and the technologies that give us instant communication. Dramatic visuals
of culpability, but also atonement and accounts for transgressions are attempted as
visual evidence is contextualized (Humphreys, 2011). And this information, in turn,
is often used for surveillance and social control. Research on the role of social
media in the ‘‘Stanley Cup Riots’’ in Vancouver, BC, in June 2011 illustrates how
participants sought notoriety and network recognition among friends and followers,
only to have their postings used as surveillance—and condemnation—against them.
Recent studies of the role of surveillance in Facebook note how the entertaining social
communication format lends itself to social control:
Citizens not affiliated with law enforcement agencies are increasingly engaging
in an emergent form of pseudo-police work (or, what we have termed
crowd-sourced policing) on social media sites. We define crowd-sourced
policing as communicative interactions that occur on social media websites that
collectively purport to act under the support of police work, even while in most
such circumstances, forms of ‘‘police work’’ conducted by citizens are actually
quite far removed official police work. Crowd-sourced policing refers to social
media user narratives consistent with criminal justice discourse, including, but
not limited to: comments that call for the capture and prosecution of any
accused persons—often referring to these individuals as ‘‘criminals’’ without
any due process, calls to hold individuals ‘‘responsible’’ for their ‘‘crimes’’,
criminal labeling or stigmatization of any persons, use of rhetoric that seeks to
label individuals in the context of criminal justice . . .
For example, a young woman, who was arrested after posting a video of herself
taking some clothing from a store during the ‘‘Stanley Cup Riot’’ in Vancouver (June
2011), later stated in a newspaper apology:

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I know a lot of you don’t believe me, but the truth is that I take full responsibility
for my actions and am sincerely apologetic for what I did. What I did was
completely out of character for me, but I did it because I was influenced by mob
mentality. I want to shed light onto the thought process that was in my head so
that maybe you can all get a little bit of an understanding and sympathize for
people like me, who made wrong decisions but have now become victims of this
social media form of mob mentality . . . And still, a lot of people will never find
remorse for me because I had a huge smile on my face. But like I said earlier, it
was fun at the time. I thought it was pretty funny because this is the only time
that I would ever do something like this. The smile on my face was an ’I’m such a
badass I can’t believe I’m doing this!’ kind of look.

Media fear
Mass media reports about fear illustrate how social power is constituted, legitimated,
and communicated through media logic with mediated formats guiding the use of
technologies. The key is to be able to mobilize knowledge for action as socially
significant accounts are geared to mediated experiences, rhetoric, symbols, and
language.
As a universal phenomenon, both communication—as the basic mode of human
organization and exchange—and the media—as potentially deployable for any kind
of social activity and able to carry and process signals of all kinds since the advent
of digitalization—have always had to deal with their fate as the blind spot of social
interaction, eclipsed by their everyday usage. (Adolf, Baumann, & Rhomberg, 2010;
Adolf & Wallner, 2011, p. 38)
Two decades of work illustrates how the discourse of fear, or the pervasive
communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a
central feature of everyday life, has been, essentially, adopted as the prevailing logic
of the ubiquitous condition of the world. It is widely acknowledged that frames are
significant in defining social problems and issues (Iyengar, 1987; Mills, 1940, 1959).
Moreover, previous work has shown how formats constitute frames and discourse.
The discourse of fear is part of the ‘‘problem frame.’’ The entertainment format of
the mass media and especially the news business, contributed to the emergence of a
highly rationalized ‘‘problem frame’’ which in turn generates reports about ‘‘fear.’’
The problem frame is a secular alternative to the morality play. Built on a
narrative structure that adds story-like coherence, with a beginning, middle, and end,
the problem frame is both universal and specific, abstract and real. For entertainment
and audience identification purposes, the closer the reader/listener/viewer is to the
actual event, the more salience the report. Local news reports stress the problem
frame, particularly crime reports, far more than national or network news. The
problem frame combines the universal and nonsituational logic and moral meanings
of a morality play (Unsworth, 1995) with the temporal and spatial parameters of a
news report—something happened involving an actual person in an actual location,

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D. L. Altheide Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

for example, street address. Unlike a morality play in which the characters are
abstractions facing death and damnation, news reports focus on ‘‘actual’’ people and
events to package the entire narrative as ‘‘realistic.’’ Complex and often ambiguous
events and concerns are symbolically mined for moral truths and understandings
presumed to be held by the audience, while the repeated presentations of similar
scenarios ‘‘teaches’’ the audience about the nature and causes of ‘‘disorder’’ (Altheide,
1997, p. 653; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1989).
The discourse of fear is now a feature of news discourse that has been expanded
by Internet blogs promoting risk and danger, on the one hand, as well as law
enforcement’s adaptation to visual formats that sustain fearful reports. Promoting
fear has become second nature to U.S. government organizations like the FBI. Even
their highly expanded surveillance of citizens has been accompanied by dramatic pre-
sentation and exaggeration of very rare threats with entertaining popular culture and
mass media reports about terrorism threats. Pew opinion surveys show that terrorism
continues to be one of the country’s top 3 priorities—much higher than reducing
crime, providing health insurance, or protecting the environment. American citizens’
consciousness and speech about the ‘‘terrorist threat’’ is a product of the propaganda
of fear that has defined a plethora of U.S. news coverage for more than a decade.
Specific applications of this logic illustrate the mediatization process. FBI sting
operations help with the programming. Stings have become popular in the United
States over the last 35 years or so as the FBI became more oriented to popular culture
and media logic. Improved and smaller audio and video recording technology
has helped provide ‘‘evidence’’ for legal proceedings as well as news and other
entertainment shows. The FBI has become skilled at recording the planning, carrying
out, and prevention of would-be terrorist acts. The general approach is to assist
people who make verbal threats to actually do something more ‘‘operational’’ (their
word). An example is Mr. Mohammed Mohamud, a 19-year-old jihadist wannabe
in Portland, Oregon, in December 2011. After being alerted by his parents, FBI
surveillance identified suspicious discussions with potential enemies in Pakistan, and
then devoted months in bringing their scripted procedures and undercover roles into
play. The aim was not to stop Mr. Mohamud or bring charges against him; there
was already probable cause to detain and arrest when he took initial steps toward
committing a terrorist act to harm people. According to the Center for Law and
Security’s ‘‘Terrorist Trial Report Card,’’ 57% of convictions in the US are for ‘‘general
criminal conspiracy.’’ But putting even a fake bomb into play permits a heavier charge
involving ‘‘attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction,’’ which brings a much
longer potential prison sentence as well as more mass media attention to the threat.
The FBI produced a dramatic performance of a bomb threat for media publicity
purposes and to promote a sense of imminent danger and fear. The federal agents
provided the knowledge, means, technology, organization and money for rent and
to purchase bomb supplies. The FBI’s affidavit makes it clear that this individual had
neither the means nor opportunity to blow up anybody. The drama of simply taking a
threatening person out of circulation was not sufficient when an actual performance

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Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear D. L. Altheide

of capturing a staged bomb attack in real time in a real place would obtain extensive
media coverage. This operation added to the public fear of terrorism, and this had
consequences. One irony is that people reacting to the publicity of this sting operation
committed a terrorist act by burning a mosque in Corvallis, Oregon. Another irony
is that knowledgeable criminals adapt to sting operations. Even the hapless Antonio
Martinez (aka Muhammad Hussain), who was similarly busted with a fake bomb in
Baltimore just a few weeks later, wondered if he was being set up, as he prepared to
drive a van provided by the FBI to a military recruiting station. Some 6 months later,
two men in Seattle—one of whom was diagnosed as mentally ill—discussed their
plans with a would-be accomplice, who was part of a police/FBI sting, to shoot people
at a recruiting station. The other conspirator posted more than a dozen YouTube
videos urging Muslims to stand up to the United States. The paid informant, who had
a long police record, provided inoperable weapons and ammunition just before the
wannabe-jihadists actually tried to act on their plans. Tape recorded conversations
played well in news reports.

Conclusion
This article has addressed how media logic and the ecology of communication are
relevant for a theory of mediation and the process of mediatization. Materials were
presented about mass media formats and new information technology in order to
illustrate how social mediation and communication formats and reflect media logic
and an ecology of communication. Not all media will be accepted in the same way
by all audiences, but even the divergence will be informed by a familiar logic. Social
context is very important in shaping experiences, expectations, and standards.
Mediated communication is reflexive of an underlying logic. A challenging task is
mapping and tracing the logic and process through which meanings are constructed
and symbolically transformed and institutionally embedded as ‘‘routine communica-
tion’’ matters. One example is tracking the discourse of fear over time across different
media. My modest efforts have been an attempt to provide a conceptualization and
perspective that joins information technology and communication (media) formats
with the time and place of activities. I suggest that it is no coincidence that the
propaganda of fear has accompanied a rapid expansion of media logic as the content
and substance of our discourse reflects the logic and procedures through which
we communicate. Hopefully, we can build on this framework to establish a more
theoretically informed understanding of the relationship between communication
and discourse in everyday life and institutional processes that emerge and reflect the
melding of traditions with new information technologies and formats of control.

Notes

1 See also, for example, the plethora of work by Richard Ericson and his students (Doyle,
2001, 2003; Ericson, 2007; Ericson et al., 1987; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan 1989; Ericson,
Baranek, & Chan 1991; Ericson & Haggerty, 1997).

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D. L. Altheide Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear

2 But surely this does not mean that we must have a distinctive theory of ‘‘social
mediation’’ for each country.

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