Fear Appeal Approach For A Political Campaign Published in Utusan Malaysia and Harakah during the 13th General Election

Previous studies have shown the ability of fear appeal in influencing voting behaviour among citizens (Jerit, 2004). During the 15-day campaign period of 13th Malaysian General Election (GE13), candidates from Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) tended to induce fear appeal into the stories reported by newspapers that support them, namely Utusan Malaysia and Harakah, respectively. This study seeks to investigate the characteristics of fear appeal in both the newspapers, the genre of news and articles that comprise the fear appeal, relationships between the genre of news and articles with characteristics of fear appeal, and differences in the way political fear appeal was employed in the content of both newspapers. In order to achieve these goals, a quantitative content analysis method was used in the study of selected news and articles. The following are the findings from the study; (a) five identified fear appeal characteristic comprising fear, threat, anger, anxiety and risk have were used frequently in Utusan Malaysia and Harakah, (b) Utusan Malaysia and Harakah demonstrated the highest interest in employing the fear appeal approach in political articles compared to other genres in both newspapers, (c) characteristics of fear appeal are strongly related to genres contained in Utusan Malaysia and Harakah, and (d) the way Utusan Malaysia and Harakah raised the issues and selected the appropriate genres determined the differences of the use of fear appeal in each newspaper.