As I say in my book Does This News Make Me Look Fat? Ingredients like sex, outrage and drama are added to media content in order to make otherwise bland news more appealing for consumption. Today’s focus is on one ingredient: drama. Drama is to a news story what fighting is to a hockey game.  Not germane to the event, but when it happens you can’t help but snap to attention and focus. The engine at the heart of drama is conflict. And one way to add drama and conflict to a news story – establish a bad guy or a gathering threat–real or imagined. One of the best conflict creators: introduce an infidel.

Infidels are snack food for religion, cults and news shows and demagogues. A snack food in that feeding your audience information about the dangers of infidels (real or imagined) feeds the passion of the group. Enough to overwhelm good media literacy skills–like asking question or for verifiable information to back up such claims.

Leaders of political parties and opinion-focused news shows have the same task: they need to keep members glued and excited. But a constant stream of your own beliefs or standard facts gets boring after awhile.  Kind of like being at a club and hearing the same beat to ad nauseum. The solution?  Give your flock an enemy or threat to consume and sustain the passion of the group. It nourishes their allegiance to the cause.  Best part, they don’t need to be a real threat.  Just present them as a boogeyman.

Media outlets, particularly opinion news and opinion leaders with media access may do this by defining activities, an event or a person as an existential threat to the values of their audience. Often based on emotionally built proven and not hard evidence.  And with poor media literacy skills, people follow the story of the threat, not the facts of the threat.

Like claims secular people are taking away things like Christmas and the Christian way of life. Hence, the War of Xmas. Or the War on Women that argues people are taking away women’s choice and medical freedoms. Or those who believe the current administration is attempting to gut the 2nd Amendment. True or not, groups waive these threats as reasons for their members to stay members.

The introduction and presentation of the infidels, especially ones as phantom threats is as old as time. In the book 1984 it was Emmanuel Goldstein, presented as ever-looming threat to the security of Oceania. Never truly seen in person by most of the citizens but always talked about as the every present but unseen threat.

Read more about the media additive drama in my book Does This News Make Me Look Fat? Get the first chapter free by going to www.junkfoodmedianation.com.