The 5th Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication (7–10 January 2025), hosted by the Catholic University of Portugal and organised in cooperation with the Europaeum, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Helsinki, investigated the relationship between media and fear.
Fear is a powerful emotion that obscures, undermines or derationalizes decision-making – and it abounds in the media coverage of wars, terror, social protests, natural disasters, technological accidents and the radical events associated with climate crisis, migration, poverty, racialized violence, misogyny, settler colonialism and other global inequities. Today it is a central ingredient of many videos and posts that go viral on social media, and is promoted by a wide range of actors, including those who instigate action against the rule of law.
The Winter School began with lectures by Prof. David Altheide (Arizona State) and Prof. Isabel Capeloa Gil (Rector of the Catholic University of Portugal) on, respectively, American fascism and Ruins and the Management of Fear in twentieth-century Germany. Further faculty keynote lectures were interspersed with a large number of student presentations, including seven by students from around the Europaeum network on topics as diverse as fake news, conspiracy theory, radicalisation of boys and men on social media, and Santa Muerte.
The School took place at the Catholic University’s main campus in Campo Grande for the first two days, but shifted for the third and fourth to the Centro Cultural de Belem, next to the famous Jerónimos Monastery. Students heard from Prof. Johana Sumiala (Helsinki), who discussed fear of death, and Prof. Frank Furedi (Kent), who discussed fear of populism. The Europaeum was pleased to sponsor the attendance of Prof. István Rév (CEU), who gave a paper discussing radio propaganda in the Eastern Bloc after 1945.
The Europaeum once again thanks the Winter School’s organisers Nelson Costa Ribeiro (UCP) and Barbie Zelizer (Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania), and its convenors Sarah Banet-Weiser (Annenberg School for the Study of Journalism, University of Pennsylvania), Francis Lee (Chinese University of Hong Kong), and Risto Kunelius (University of Helsinki), for including us in this exceptional and wide-ranging interdisciplinary forum.
