This chapter explores how the news media exploits anxiety to capture and maintain audience attention, driven by economic pressures. It discusses the negative consequences of this type of journalism on politics, culture, and political parties.
In the diagnosis of the epidemic of anxiety sweeping through society, the examination has tended to focus on individual risk factors or macro-social trends (like social media and smartphone adoption among teens). But this misses something going on at the intermediary level between individuals and mass society: the state of the institutions that shape so much of our daily life. Curtis is joined by renowned scholar Yuval Levin in exploring the concept of “the anxious institution.” They make the case that institutions both externally cause and internally experience anxiety in fascinating and important ways.