the 'sensation of insecurity' and affective appeals

According to Shouse (2005) and Massumi (2002), it could be argued that given the pervasiveness of affect, the influence of many forms of media lies not so much in their ideological outcomes, but in their capacity to produce affective impacts independent of content or meaning. Thrift claims that the “political nowadays routinely takes in all manner of forms of culture-nature relation, this redefinition of what counts as political has allowed more room for explicitly affective appeals which are heavily dependent upon the media” (2004: 65). Thus, the “sensation” (something very subjective becomes collective) of insecurity is constantly reproduced by these “affective resonances” created by the many forms of media.