Blog Post 4 - Media Phobia

When Karen says “Panics about popular culture..." I believe she means the panics are created to subdue groups with less power. An example of this is the amount of attention any celebrity might receive when they pick a fight with another celebrity. These celebrities are causing a panic in popular culture to draw more attention to them and, in addition, keep that attention from people they don't want the attention to go to. What I think Karen means by "…Popular culture is frequently used as a proxy for hostility, and so we condemn a group’s cultural preferences rather than openly express it towards the group" is that people fall into the mob mentality. If a large amount of people believe or at least act like they believe a group's "cultural preferences" are bad, these people can influence others to take the same stance as them. An example of this is Justine Sacco and her tweet. Once a group of people started to bash on her, many others believed it to be the right thing to do.