Reproduction of Communicative Negativity Through Instrumental Irrationality

Abstract

This paper aims to use Turkey as an example of how the erosion occurring in social communication practices is reproduced in the era of paradoxical experiences, particularly in global crisis environments where risk intensity increases. Recently, ‘the great incarceration’ situation around the world has forced people to receive news and connect to them via digital platforms. The isolation of social relations for an indefinite period, especially in risk society, causes people to feel constantly under pressure from an unforeseen/indeterminate threat. The increase in the level of anxiety of the individual under pressure, internalizing fear after a while, turns him/herself into the very mechanism that produces anxiety and fear. This mechanism causes society to become paralyzed as a result of increased information pollution and the amount of information during global crisis periods. The paper examines how the negativity in communication has been exploited through the media with crises in different institutional areas —political, economic, and social— recently, in the framework of the terms of risk and trust used by Giddens and Beck’s risk society theory. From this point on, the paper focuses on the consequences of the mutual relationship between global crisis, fear culture and the new modern period.