Question:
The modern global environment has witnessed both the social amplification and attenuation of security messages by governments and political figures to facilitate the achievement of their specific objectives. For example, the Australian Prime Ministers emphasis of the word security in his address to The National Press Club stating "opportunity is built on security: job security, economic security, energy security, national security" highlights how emotional language associated with the word security including protected and opportunity can be used to divert people from perhaps more significant issues through the application or amplification of security risk messages.
While security lacks a single definition it is usually associated with malevolent human actors as opposed to issues of sustainability. Nonetheless, security has been defined as the absence of threats to acquired values (Wolfers, 1952). Values are a cover term for those things that we hold as important. Consequently, words such as sustainable, or resilience, or affordable have been synonymously with the word security. In the pursuit of a secure environment values can become conflicted as some values must be traded in the pursuit of others. Language is a powerful tool in the shaping of value trading with governments and political figures engaging with their citizenry through the use of carefully selected words, to shape their emotions towards supporting the chosen risk message. As Inglehart and Norris (2012) point out, security has become a rallying cry where anything can be significant as long as it is preceded by the word security.
Task
Review the relevant literature and undertake an analysis discussing how language has been used to influence perceptions of the security landscape, responding to the question: did the use of language present a balanced security risk perspective or was it deliberately used to amplify or attenuate perceptions to achieve a political objective and what was this objective, and why did a security framing help achieve it-
To successfully complete this assignment students must demonstrate a high level of research where a minimum of 20 quality references are utilized to establish an informed argument. Of these references as least 2/3's must stem from academic texts.
This paper will:
- Provide you with experience in bringing together divergent or different ideas to form new ideas which are valid and consistent in logic.
- Provide you with practice in formal essay writing by expressing your argument in a coherent and reasoned manner.
- Provide you with experience in supporting your argument by reference to readings, references, and other source materials.
In the essay you should use the following style:
- Use HEADINGS and Subheadings in the essay to make the text easier to read.
- Write sentences and paragraphs under the headings.
- Use diagrams to illustrate your writing, and label as Figure 1: Title of the figure.
- Use tables of data and information to summarise details, and label as Table 1: Title of the table.
- The essay text should be grammatically correct, and free from spelling errors.
In this essay you should consider the following suggestions:
- The structure of each of the responses to the parts of the assignment.
- Where you will obtain the information to complete the assignment, and support your argument.
- All information obtained from lecture notes, text, reference books, journals, etc. must be referenced, as you need to acknowledge where you obtained the information.