This week’s “Light Over Heat” video explains a little trick I use to see through the fog produced by the mass-mediated culture of fear.
If someone says they are “seeing more X” — where X = some negative outcome with guns — I distinguish between [seeing more] and [more X].
In this day and age, we are definitely [seeing more] everything. But often what we see goes well beyond [more X].
Some additional materials on this topic:
Barry Glassner’s The Culture of Fear is the landmark book on the topic.
Dan Gardner’s takes the culture of fear concept and applies it to cognitive science in The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain.
The image in the Light Over Heat video comes from Our World In Data, “Does the news reflect what we die from?”. That article also includes the data visualization below, which shows that terrorism (of which mass public shootings are a variety), homicide, and suicide are three of the most overrepresented causes of death in the media.
Gun Curious 
Excellent work! Thank you esp for the references.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Several of the under-represented causes of death are problematic to report on, as they would require addressing the literal elephant in the room. The obesity epidemic.
LikeLike