CQ630
Risk, Media and the Politics of Anxiety
0.5 Credit

Risk has become a key concept around which social, political, and cultural concerns have been organized. This course explores theories of risk with a focus on the ways that the production and dissemination of knowledges about risk informs what may be called a politics of anxiety. Through the conceptual frame provided by various theorizations of risk in risk society, governmentality, and culture of fear literatures, this course problematizes the ways that risks are defined and circulated through media through a focus on case-studies illustrative of the tensions that inhere in risk discourses.