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. Keywords: COVID-19, global crisis, info­demic, risk society, sociology of commu­nication, media.