Session 6: FHT in Public Faces and Public Spaces

Session 6: FHT in Public Faces and Public Spaces
Chair: Dan Carr

Societies Under Siege: Media, Government, Politics and Citizens’ Freedoms in an Age of Terrorism
Banu Baybars-Hawks
Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey

A famous historian and media scholar Fredrick S. Siebert, in his Freedom of the Press in England, 1476-1776, argued that when events increased stresses on society and on government, freedom of expression would diminish.  For example, especially in war times, or if any internal attack on the structure of government is perceived, restraints on freedoms are increased.
For many years in much of the world,  terrorism has been  a major continuing threat to peace, freedom and progress.  Historically, the experience of the United States with terrorism is not lengthy.  When hijacked airliners brought down New York City’s World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2006 and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., roughly 3,000 persons died.  Reactions to those events,  through passage of laws, vigorous police measures, and military initiatives have placed the United States on a continuous war footing.  A nation which long prided itself on its openness is now quite closed.
During the past 20 years, the United States – a nation of more than 300 million persons -has suffered perhaps 3,500 deaths from terrorist incidents.  Turkey, by comparison, a nation of about 70 million persons, has lost 40,000 persons to terrorist activities in that same two-decade period. Comparative study of the experiences of Turkey and the United States is proposed to better understand aspects of terrorism.
Over years, governments have used various justifications in limiting freedoms. This paper focuses on one of those justifications, threats to national security, in line with Fredrick S. Siebert’s argument, which asserted that the more insecure the government, the more restraints are put on freedoms. Governments under normal circumstances are not likely to interfere with fundamental liberties. But if they are seriously threatened, they would exert control of various kinds. The examples of Turkey and the United States, as argued in this paper, will support Siebert’s thesis.

Trash Mob: Zombie Walks and the Positivity of Monsters in Contemporary Popular Culture
Simone do Vale
Communication & Culture, Federal University, Rio de Janeiro’s, Brazil

Employing flash mobs tactics and performed worldwide by youngsters dressed as the undead since 2003, zombie walks keep spreading all over like a “plague”, in a metaphor that ilustrates contemporary fears of disintegration, nuclear catastrophes and infection, due to HIV and other highly spetacularized epidemies, whilst revealing an affectionate identification with this amazingly resilient monstrous cultural icon that mixes life and death, human and non-human in one single lurching carcass. These parades were inspired by the ever growing zombie culture, due to the constant appropriation of George Romero’s famous apocalyptic trilogy through remakes and original movies like The Return of the Living Dead (1985), 28 Days (2002) or Shawn of the Dead (2004), as well as the popular video game Resident Evil and it’s versions on celluloid. Therefore, by focusing on the recent global phenomenon of zombie walks, this paper aims to discuss the positivity of monsters in contemporary western popular culture by exploring the new role assigned to the zombie myth.