Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Scare tactics

One thing I’ve noticed when looking at how both sides of this controversy communicate their beliefs is that they both use scare tactics.

On the anti-GM side, graphic pictures are commonly used to show how eating GM food will mutate, maim, or even kill (including children in these pictures seems to make the message more impressive). A search for ‘genetically engineered food’ in Google images will show you a vast range of such images.

They are also quite fond of using a semi-standard picture of a piece of fruit or vegetable with a syringe sticking into it, sometimes with a ‘scientist’ or ‘doctor/nurse’ holding the syringe. I think this is to emphasise the fact that the fruit/vegetable has been ‘messed with by science’. Many people have a phobia of needles, so using images such as this would add the fear factor for people who suffer from such phobias.

On the pro-GM side, images are not used so much to get the message across. Rather, they tend to emphasise the need for new technologies in food production, stating facts and statistics of how current food production techniques will not be able to keep up with future demand.

Both sides are guilty of using scare tactics to try to get their point of view across. How do these tactics affect your view of the controversy?

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