Research+Product

define "social hysteria" What is it? how is it caused? how it impacts viewers/listeners?

define media's role in social hysteria Symptoms reactions

provide examples

__Social Hysteria__: When society becomes uneasy or panics about social issues.


 * This form of hysteria is usually formed from a mass amount of wrongful information.
 * It hurts those who have it simply by making them become ignorant about certain issues to those who know the correct information. It also hurts those because they become psychologically unstable to a certain extent because they are scared or panicky.
 * The reason people usually develop this problem is because they are either given wrongful information or the coverage on the issue is overblown and taken out of context. Usually all of this is caused because of their social medium and either the biased coverage or the unnecessary over-coverage of the issue.
 * Symptoms consist of not being able to judge right from wrong on issues. Sometimes even an uneasiness in how they act in their everyday activities will show a slight hysteria especially if that activity has been covered in the news.

Personally I think this is ridiculous and no one should ever have to experience the things these people have to. More importantly there shouldn't be a news medium out there who is biased because the news is about facts about what is happening in the world. The news should also never put on a story that they do not have all the facts to. Nor should the news blindly leave out facts they know that are essential to the understanding of a certain report just to keep viewers interested, the news is about facts not entertainment.

Things like Social Hysteria are caused from people giving false information and it is driving those watching/listening crazy. It also makes people ignorant for they do not know what they are talking about. For instance, the news report about the Mosque being built at the "Ground Zero" site. The news's headline and story were about it being built on the grounds of the site when in actuality it was only going to be built several blocks away from the site.

Also in Alaska, in the papers there was a story about a dog that was put in the pound and was looking for a home. Sadly the author left out some details and what actually happened is the dog had bitten someone and so the dog was automatically placed in a pound. Since it did not have its' rabies shot it was forced to stay in the pound for a 10 day waiting period. Sadly, It was then euthanized for it had a bite history and once an animal has a bite history it is not allowed to be put up for adoption.

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