Abstract: Since September 11, Muslims in Australia have experienced a heightened level of religiously and racially motivated vilification (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission). These fears were poignantly expressed in a letter to the Editor of The West Australian newspaper from a Muslim woman shortly after the London terror attacks: All I want to say is that for those out there who might have kamikaze ideas of doing such an act here in Australia, please think of others (us) in your own community. The ones who will get hurt are your own, especially we the women who are an obvious target in the public and have to succumb to verbal abuse most of the time. Dealing with abuse and hatred from some due to 9/11 and Bali is not something I want to go through again. (21) The atmosfear of terror finds many expressions among the Muslim communities in Australia: the fear of backlash from some sectors of the wider community; the fear of subversion of Islamic identity in meeting the requirements of a politically defined “moderate” Islam; the fear of being identified as a potential terrorist or “person of interest” and the fear of potentially losing the rights bestowed on all other citizens. This fear or fears are grounded in the political and the media response to terrorism that perpetuates a popular belief that Muslims, as a culturally and religiously incompatible “other”, pose a threat to the Australian collective identity and, ostensibly, to Australia’s security. At the time of publication, for example, there was mob violence involving 5,000 young people converging on Sydney’s Cronulla beach draped in Australian flags singing Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia Fair as well as chanting “kill the Lebs”, “no more Lebs” (Lebanese). The mob was itself brought together by a series of SMS messages, appealing to participants to “help support Leb and Wog bashing day” and to “show solidarity” against a government-identified “threat to Aussie identity” (The West Australian). Since September 11 and the ensuing war on terror, a new discourse of terrorism has emerged as a way of expressing how the world has changed and defining a state of constant alert (Altheide). “The war on terror” refers as much to a perpetual state of alertness as it does to a range of strategic operations, border control policies, internal security measures and public awareness campaigns such as “be alert, not alarmed”. According to a poll published in The Sydney Morning Herald in April 2004, 68 per cent of Australians believed that Australia was at threat of an imminent terrorist attack (Michaelsen). In a major survey in Australia immediately after the September 11 attacks Dunn & Mahtani found that more than any other cultural or ethnic group, Muslims and people from the Middle East were thought to be unable to fit into Australia. Two thirds of those surveyed believed that humanity could be sorted into natural categories of race, with the majority feeling that Australia was weakened by people of different ethnic origins. Fifty-four per cent of those surveyed, mainly women, said they would be concerned if a relative of theirs married a Muslim. The majority of the Muslim population, not surprisingly, has gone into a “siege mentality” (Hanna). The atmosfear of terror in the Western world is a product of the media and political construction of the West as perpetually at threat of a terrorist attack from a foreign, alien, politically defined “other”, where “insecurity…is the new normal” (Massumi 31). Framed in a rhetoric that portrays it as a battle for the Western values of democracy and freedom, the “war on terror” becomes not just an event in space and time but a metonym for a new world order, drawing on distinctions between “us” and “them” and “the West” and “others” (Osuri and Banerjee) and motivating collective identity based on a construction of “us” as victims and “them” as the objects of fear, concern and suspicion. The political response to the war on terror has inculcated an atmosfear of terror where Australian Muslims are identified as the objects of this fear. The fear of terrorism is being modulated through government and the popular media to perpetuate a state of anxiety that finds expression in the heightened levels of concern and suspicion over a perceived threat. In the case of the war on terror, this threat is typically denoted as radical Islam and, by inference, Australian Muslims. In his exposition of political fear, Corey Robin notes that a central element of political fear is that it is often not read as such – rendering it alien to analysis, critical debate and understanding. Nowhere is this more salient than in the rhetoric on the war on terror characterised by the familiar invocation of terms like democracy and freedom to make distinctions between “the West and the rest” and to legitimise references to civilised and uncivilised worlds. In his speech delivered at the United Nations Security Council Ministerial Session on Terrorism on 20 January 2003, Colin Powell invoked the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations and urged, “we must rid the civilised world of this cancer … We must rise to the challenge with actions that will ride the globe of terrorism and create a world in which all God’s children can live without fear”. It is this construction of the war on terror as a global battle between “the West and the rest” that enables and facilitates the affective response to political fear – a reaffirmation of identity and membership of a collective. As Robin states: Understanding the objects of our fear as less than political allows us to treat them as intractable foes. Nothing can be done to accommodate them: they can only be killed or contained. Understanding the objects of our fear as not political also renews us as a collective. Afraid, we are like the audience in a crowded theatre confronting a man falsely shouting fire: united, not because we share similar beliefs of aspiration but because we are equally threatened. (6) This response has found expression in the perception of Muslims as an alien, culturally incompatible and utterly threatening other, creating a state of social tension where the public’s anxiety has been and continues to be directed at Australian Muslims who visibly represent the objects of the fear of terror. The Australian Government’s response to the war on terror exemplifies what Brian Massumi terms “affective modulation” whereby the human response to the fear of terror, that of a reinforcement and renewal of collective identity, has been modulated and transformed from an affective response to an affective state of anxiety – what the authors term the atmosfear of terror. Affect for Massumi can be inscribed in the flesh as “traces of experience” – an accumulation of affects. It is in this way that Massumi views affect as “autonomous” (Megan Watkins also makes this argument, and has further translated Massumi's notions into the idea of pedagogic affect/effect). In the Australian context, after more than four years of collected traces of experiences of images of threat, responses to terrorism have become almost reflexive – even automated. Affective modulation in the Australian context relies on the regenerative capacity of fear, in Massumi’s terms its “ontogenetic powers” (45) to create an ever-present threat and maintain fear as a way of life. The introduction of a range of counter-terrorism strategies, internal-security measures, legislative amendments and policies, often without public consultation and timed to coincide with “new” terror alerts is testimony to the affective machinations of the Australian government in its response to the war on terror. Virilio and Lotringer called “pure war” the psychological state that happens when people know that they live in a world where the potential for sudden and absolute destruction exists. It is not the capacity for destruction so much as the continual threat of sudden destruction that creates this psychology. Keith Spence has stated that in times of crisis the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalised. The counter-terrorism legislation introduced in response to the war on terror is, arguably, the most drastic anti-libertarian measures Australia has witnessed and constitutes a disproportionate response to Australia’s overall risk profile (Michaelsen). Some of these measures would once have seemed an unthinkable assault on civil liberties and unreasonably authoritarian. Yet in the war on terror, notes Jessica Stern, framed as a global war of good versus evil, policies and strategies that once seemed impossible suddenly become constructed as rationale, if not prudent. Since September 11, the Australian government has progressively introduced a range of counter-terrorism measures including over 30 legislative amendments and, more recently, increased powers for the police to detain persons of interest suspected of sedition. In the wake of the London bombings, the Prime Minister called a summit with Muslim representatives from around the nation. In the two hours that they met, the summit developed a Statement of Principles committing members of Muslim communities to combat radicalisation and pursue “moderate” Islam. As an affective machination, the summit presents as a useful political tool for modulating the existing anxieties in the Australian populace. The very need for a summit of this nature and for the development of a Statement of Principles (later endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments or COAG) sends a lucid message to the Australian public. Not only are Australian Muslims responsible for terrorism but they also have the capacity to prevent or minimise the threat of an attack in Australia. Already the focus of at least a decade of negative stereotyping in the popular Australia media (Brasted), Australian Muslims all too quickly and easily became agents in the Government’s affective tactics. The policy response to the war on terror has given little consideration to the social implications of sustaining a fear of terrorism, placing much emphasis on security- focused counter-terrorism measures rather than education and dialogue. What governments and communities need to address is the affective aspects of the atmosfear of terror. Policy makers can begin by becoming self-reflexive and developing an understanding of the real impact of fear and the affective modulation of this fear. Communities can start by developing an understanding of how policy induced fear is affecting them. To begin this process of reflection, governments and communities need to recognise fear of terrorism as a political tool. Psychological explanations for fear or trauma are important, especially if we are to plan policy responses to them. However, if we are to fight against policy-induced fear, we need to better understand and recognise affective modulation as a process that is not reducible to individual psychology. Viewed from the perspective of affect, the atmosfear of terror reveals an attempt to modulate public anxiety and sustain a sense of Australia as perpetually at threat from a culturally incompatible and irreconcilable “other”. References Altheide, David. L. “Consuming Terrorism.” Symbolic Interaction 27.3 (2004): 289–308. Brasted, Howard, V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000”. In A. Saeed & S. Akbarzadeh, Muslim Communities in Australia. Sydney: U of NSW P, 2001. Dunn, K.M., and M. Mahtani. “Media Representations of Ethnic Minorities.” Progress in Planning 55.3 (2001): 63–72. Dunn, K.M. “The Cultural Geographies of Citizenship in Australia.” Geography Bulletin 33.1 (2001): 4–8. “Genesis of Cronulla’s Ugly Sunday Began Years Ago.” The West Australian 2005: 11. Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1–14. Hanna, D. 2003. “Siege Mentality: Current Australian Response.” Salam July-Aug. (2003): 12–4. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Ismaa – Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004. Kerbaj, Richard. “Clerics Still Preaching Hatred of West.” The Australian 3 Nov. 2005. Kinnvall, Catarina. “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security.” Political Psychology 25.5 (2004): 741. “Letters to the Editor.” The West Australian 25 July 2005: 21. Massumi, Brian. “Fear (The Spectrum Said).” Positions 13.1 (2005): 31–48. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” In P. Patton, ed., Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. “Meeting with Islamic Community Leaders, Statement of Principles.” 23 Aug. 2005. http://www.pm.gov.au/news/media_releases/media_Release1524.html 〉 Michaelsen, Christopher. “Antiterrorism Legislation in Australia: A Proportionate Response to the Terrorist Threat?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28.4 (2005): 321–40. Osuri, Goldie, and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151–71. Powell, Colin. “Ridding the World of Global Terrorism: No Countries or Citizens are Safe.” Vital Speeches of the Day 69.8 (2003): 230–3. Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Spence, Keith. “World Risk Society and War against Terror.” Political Studies 53.2 (2005): 284–304. Stern, Jessica. “Fearing Evil.” Social Research 71.4 (2004): 1111–7. “Terrorism Chronology.” Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/law/terrorism.htm 〉 Tomkins, Silvan. Affect, Imagery and Consciousness. New York: Springer Publishing, 1962. Virilio, Paul, and Sylvere Lotringer. Pure War. New York: Semio-text(e), 1997. Watkins, Megan. “Pedagogic Affect/Effect: Teaching Writing in the Primary Years of School.” Presented at Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice Conference. Singapore: National Institute of Education, 31 May 2005. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php 〉 . APA Style Aly, A., and M. Balnaves. (Dec. 2005) "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 from 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php 〉 .

Abstract: Introduction I think the Privacy Act is a huge edifice to protect the minority of things that could go wrong. I’ve got a good example for you, I’m just trying to think … yeah the worst one I’ve ever seen was the Balga Youth Program where we took these students on a reward excursion all the way to Fremantle and suddenly this very alienated kid started to jump under a bus, a moving bus so the kid had to be restrained. The cops from Fremantle arrived because all the very good people in Fremantle were alarmed at these grown-ups manhandling a kid and what had happened is that DCD [Department of Community Development] had dropped him into the program but hadn’t told us that this kid had suicide tendencies. No, it’s just chronically bad. And there were caseworkers involved and … there is some information that we have to have that doesn’t get handed down. Rather than a blanket rule that everything’s confidential coming from them to us, and that was a real live situation, and you imagine how we’re trying to handle it, we had taxis going from Balga to Fremantle to get staff involved and we only had to know what to watch out for and we probably could have … well what you would have done is not gone on the excursion I suppose (School Principal, quoted in Balnaves and Luca 49). These comments are from a school principal in Perth, Western Australia in a school that is concerned with “at-risk” students, and in a context where the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 has imposed limitations on their work. Under this Act it is illegal to pass health, personal or sensitive information concerning an individual on to other people. In the story cited above the Department of Community Development personnel were apparently protecting the student’s “negative right”, that is, “freedom from” interference by others. On the other hand, the principal’s assertion that such information should be shared is potentially a “positive right” because it could cause something to be done in that person’s or society’s interests. Balnaves and Luca noted that positive and negative rights have complex philosophical underpinnings, and they inform much of how we operate in everyday life and of the dilemmas that arise (49). For example, a ban on euthanasia or the “assisted suicide” of a terminally ill person can be a “positive right” because it is considered to be in the best interests of society in general. However, physicians who tacitly approve a patient’s right to end their lives with a lethal dose by legally prescribed dose of medication could be perceived as protecting the patient’s “negative right” as a “freedom from” interference by others. While acknowledging the merits of collaboration between people who are working to improve the wellbeing of students “at-risk”, this paper examines some of the barriers to collaboration. Based on both primary and secondary sources, and particularly on oral testimonies, the paper highlights the tension between privacy as a negative right and collaborative helping as a positive right. It also points to other difficulties and dilemmas within and between the institutions engaged in this joint undertaking. The authors acknowledge Michel Foucault’s contention that discourse is power. The discourse on privacy and the sharing of information in modern societies suggests that privacy is a negative right that gives freedom from bureaucratic interference and protects the individual. However, arguably, collaboration between agencies that are working to support individuals “at-risk” requires a measured relaxation of the requirements of this negative right. Children and young people “at-risk” are a case in point. Towards Collaboration From a series of interviews conducted in 2004, the school authorities at Balga Senior High School and Midvale Primary School, people working for the Western Australian departments of Community Development, Justice, and Education and Training in Western Australia, and academics at the Edith Cowan and Curtin universities, who are working to improve the we llbeing of students “at-risk” as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) project called Smart Communities, have identified students “at-risk” as individuals who have behavioural problems and little motivation, who are alienated and possibly violent or angry, who under-perform in the classroom and have begun to truant. They noted also that students “at-risk” often suffer from poor health, lack of food and medication, are victims of unwanted pregnancies, and are engaged in antisocial and illegal behaviour such as stealing cars and substance abuse. These students are also often subject to domestic violence (parents on drugs or alcohol), family separation, and homelessness. Some are depressed or suicidal. Sometimes cultural factors contribute to students being regarded as “at-risk”. For example, a social worker in the Smart Communities project stated: Cultural factors sometimes come into that as well … like with some Muslim families … they can flog their daughter or their son, usually the daughter … so cultural factors can create a risk. Research elsewhere has revealed that those children between the ages of 11-17 who have been subjected to bullying at school or physical or sexual abuse at home and who have threatened and/or harmed another person or suicidal are “high-risk” youths (Farmer 4). In an attempt to bring about a positive change in these alienated or “at-risk” adolescents, Balga Senior High School has developed several programs such as the Youth Parents Program, Swan Nyunger Sports Education program, Intensive English Centre, and lower secondary mainstream program. The Midvale Primary School has provided services such as counsellors, Aboriginal child protection workers, and Aboriginal police liaison officers for these “at-risk” students. On the other hand, the Department of Community Development (DCD) has provided services to parents and caregivers for children up to 18 years. Academics from Edith Cowan and Curtin universities are engaged in gathering the life stories of these “at-risk” students. One aspect of this research entails the students writing their life stories in a secured web portal that the universities have developed. The researchers believe that by engaging the students in these self-exploration activities, they (the students) would develop a more hopeful outlook on life. Though all agencies and educational institutions involved in this collaborative project are working for the well-being of the children “at-risk”, the Privacy Act forbids the authorities from sharing information about them. A school psychologist expressed concern over the Privacy Act: When the Juvenile Justice Department want to reintroduce a student into a school, we can’t find out anything about this student so we can’t do any preplanning. They want to give the student a fresh start, so there’s always that tension … eventually everyone overcomes [this] because you realise that the student has to come to the school and has to be engaged. Of course, the manner and consequences of a student’s engagement in school cannot be predicted. In the scenario described above students may have been given a fair chance to reform themselves, which is their positive right but if they turn out to be at “high risk” it would appear that the Juvenile Department protected the negative right of the students by supporting “freedom from” interference by others. Likewise, a school health nurse in the project considered confidentiality or the Privacy Act an important factor in the security of the student “at-risk”: I was trying to think about this kid who’s one of the children who has been sexually abused, who’s a client of DCD, and I guess if police got involved there and wanted to know details and DCD didn’t want to give that information out then I’d guess I’d say to the police “Well no, you’ll have to talk to the parents about getting further information.” I guess that way, recognising these students are minor and that they are very vulnerable, their information … where it’s going, where is it leading? Who wants to know? Where will it be stored? What will be the outcomes in the future for this kid? As a 14 year old, if they’re reckless and get into things, you know, do they get a black record against them by the time they’re 19? What will that information be used for if it’s disclosed? So I guess I become an advocate for the student in that way? Thus the nurse considers a sexually abused child should not be identified. It is a positive right in the interest of the person. Once again, though, if the student turns out to be at “high risk” or suicidal, then it would appear that the nurse was protecting the youth’s negative right—“freedom from” interference by others. Since collaboration is a positive right and aims at the students’ welfare, the workable solution to prevent the students from suicide would be to develop inter-agency trust and to share vital information about “high-risk” students. Dilemmas of Collaboration Some recent cases of the deaths of young non-Caucasian girls in Western countries, either because of the implications of the Privacy Act or due to a lack of efficient and effective communication and coordination amongst agencies, have raised debates on effective child protection. For example, the British Laming report (2003) found that Victoria Climbié, a young African girl, was sent by her parents to her aunt in Britain in order to obtain a good education and was murdered by her aunt and aunt’s boyfriend. However, the risk that she could be harmed was widely known. The girl’s problems were known to 6 local authorities, 3 housing authorities, 4 social services, 2 child protection teams, and the police, the local church, and the hospital, but not to the education authorities. According to the Laming Report, her death could have been prevented if there had been inter-agency sharing of information and appropriate evaluation (Balnaves and Luca 49). The agencies had supported the negative rights of the young girl’s “freedom from” interference by others, but at the cost of her life. Perhaps Victoria’s racial background may have contributed to the concealment of information and added to her disadvantaged position. Similarly, in Western Australia, the Gordon Inquiry into the death of Susan Taylor, a 15 year old girl Aboriginal girl at the Swan Nyungah Community, found that in her short life this girl had encountered sexual violation, violence, and the ravages of alcohol and substance abuse. The Gordon Inquiry reported: Although up to thirteen different agencies were involved in providing services to Susan Taylor and her family, the D[epartment] of C[ommunity] D[evelopment] stated they were unaware of “all the services being provided by each agency” and there was a lack of clarity as to a “lead coordinating agency” (Gordon et al. quoted in Scott 45). In this case too, multiple factors—domestic, racial, and the Privacy Act—may have led to Susan Taylor’s tragic end. In the United Kingdom, Harry Ferguson noted that when a child is reported to be “at-risk” from domestic incidents, they can suffer further harm because of their family’s concealment (204). Ferguson’s study showed that in 11 per cent of the 319 case sample, children were known to be re-harmed within a year of initial referral. Sometimes, the parents apply a veil of secrecy around themselves and their children by resisting or avoiding services. In such cases the collaborative efforts of the agencies and education may be thwarted. Lack of cultural education among teachers, youth workers, and agencies could also put the “at-risk” cultural minorities into a high risk category. For example, an “at-risk” Muslim student may not be willing to share personal experiences with the school or agencies because of religious sensitivities. This happened in the UK when Khadji Rouf was abused by her father, a Bangladeshi. Rouf’s mother, a white woman, and her female cousin f rom Bangladesh, both supported Rouf when she finally disclosed that she had been sexually abused for over eight years. After group therapy, Rouf stated that she was able to accept her identity and to call herself proudly “mixed race”, whereas she rejected the Asian part of herself because it represented her father. Other Asian girls and young women in this study reported that they could not disclose their abuse to white teachers or social workers because of the feeling that they would be “letting down their race or their Muslim culture” (Rouf 113). The marginalisation of many Muslim Australians both in the job market and in society is long standing. For example, in 1996 and again in 2001 the Muslim unemployment rate was three times higher than the national total (Australian Bureau of Statistics). But since the 9/11 tragedy and Bali bombings visible Muslims, such as women wearing hijabs (headscarves), have sometimes been verbally and physically abused and called ‘terrorists’ by some members of the wider community (Dreher 13). The Howard government’s new anti-terrorism legislation and the surveillance hotline ‘Be alert not alarmed’ has further marginalised some Muslims. Some politicians have also linked Muslim asylum seekers with terrorists (Kabir 303), which inevitably has led Muslim “at-risk” refugee students to withdraw from school support such as counselling. Under these circumstances, Muslim “at-risk” students and their parents may prefer to maintain a low profile rather than engage with agencies. In this case, arguably, federal government politics have exacerbated the barriers to collaboration. It appears that unfamiliarity with Muslim culture is not confined to mainstream Australians. For example, an Aboriginal liaison police officer engaged in the Smart Communities project in Western Australia had this to say about Muslim youths “at-risk”: Different laws and stuff from different countries and they’re coming in and sort of thinking that they can bring their own laws and religions and stuff … and when I say religions there’s laws within their religions as well that they don’t seem to understand that with Australia and our laws. Such generalised misperceptions of Muslim youths “at-risk” would further alienate them, thus causing a major hindrance to collaboration. The “at-risk” factors associated with Aboriginal youths have historical connections. Research findings have revealed that indigenous youths aged between 10-16 years constitute a vast majority in all Australian States’ juvenile detention centres. This over-representation is widely recognised as associated with the nature of European colonisation, and is inter-related with poverty, marginalisation and racial discrimination (Watson et al. 404). Like the Muslims, their unemployment rate was three times higher than the national total in 2001 (ABS). However, in 1998 it was estimated that suicide rates among Indigenous peoples were at least 40 per cent higher than national average (National Advisory Council for Youth Suicide Prevention, quoted in Elliot-Farrelly 2). Although the wider community’s unemployment rate is much lower than the Aboriginals and the Muslims, the “at-risk” factors of mainstream Australian youths are often associated with dysfunctional families, high conflict, low-cohesive families, high levels of harsh parental discipline, high levels of victimisation by peers, and high behavioural inhibition (Watson et al. 404). The Macquarie Fields riots in 2005 revealed the existence of “White” underclass and “at-risk” people in Sydney. Macquarie Fields’ unemployment rate was more than twice the national average. Children growing up in this suburb are at greater risk of being involved in crime (The Age). Thus small pockets of mainstream underclass youngsters also require collaborative attention. In Western Australia people working on the Smart Communities project identified that lack of resources can be a hindrance to collaboration for all sectors. As one social worker commented: “government agencies are hierarchical systems and lack resources”. They went on to say that in their department they can not give “at-risk” youngsters financial assistance in times of crisis: We had a petty cash box which has got about 40 bucks in it and sometimes in an emergency we might give a customer a couple of dollars but that’s all we can do, we can’t give them any larger amount. We have bus/metro rail passes, that’s the only thing that we’ve actually got. A youth worker in Smart Communities commented that a lot of uncertainty is involved with young people “at-risk”. They said that there are only a few paid workers in their field who are supported and assisted by “a pool of volunteers”. Because the latter give their time voluntarily they are under no obligation to be constant in their attendance, so the number of available helpers can easily fluctuate. Another youth worker identified a particularly important barrier to collaboration: because of workers’ relatively low remuneration and high levels of work stress, the turnover rates are high. The consequence of this is as follows: The other barrier from my point is that you’re talking to somebody about a student “at-risk”, and within 14 months or 18 months a new person comes in [to that position] then you’ve got to start again. This way you miss a lot of information [which could be beneficial for the youth]. Conclusion The Privacy Act creates a dilemma in that it can be either beneficial or counter-productive for a student’s security. To be blunt, a youth who has suicided might have had their privacy protected, but not their life. Lack of funding can also be a constraint on collaboration by undermining stability and autonomy in the workforce, and blocking inter-agency initiatives. Lack of awareness about cultural differences can also affect unity of action. The deepening inequality between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the Australian society, and the Howard government’s harshness on national security issues, can also pose barriers to collaboration on youth issues. Despite these exigencies and dilemmas, it would seem that collaboration is “the only game” when it comes to helping students “at-risk”. To enhance this collaboration, there needs to be a sensible modification of legal restrictions to information sharing, an increase in government funding and support for inter-agency cooperation and informal information sharing, and an increased awareness about the cultural needs of minority groups and knowledge of the mainstream underclass. Acknowledgments The research is part of a major Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, Smart Communities. The authors very gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the interviewees, and thank *Donald E. Scott for conducting the interviews. References Australian Bureau of Statistics. 1996 and 2001. Balnaves, Mark, and Joe Luca. “The Impact of Digital Persona on the Future of Learning: A Case Study on Digital Repositories and the Sharing of Information about Children At-Risk in Western Australia”, paper presented at Ascilite, Brisbane (2005): 49-56. 10 April 2006. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/ 06_Balnaves.pdf 〉 . Dreher, Tanya. ‘Targeted’: Experiences of Racism in NSW after September 11, 2001. Sydney: University of Technology, 2005. Elliot-Farrelly, Terri. “Australian Aboriginal Suicide: The Need for an Aboriginal Suicidology”? Australian e-Journal for the Advancement of Mental Health, 3.3 (2004): 1-8. 15 April 2006 http://www.auseinet.com/journal/vol3iss3/elliottfarrelly.pdf 〉 . Farmer, James. A. High-Risk Teenagers: Real Cases and Interception Strategies with Resistant Adolescents. Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 1990. Ferguson, Harry. Protecting Children in Time: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Wri tings, 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. Rouf, Khadji. “Myself in Echoes. My Voice in Song.” Ed. A. Bannister, et al. Listening to Children. London: Longman, 1990. Scott E. Donald. “Exploring Communication Patterns within and across a School and Associated Agencies to Increase the Effectiveness of Service to At-Risk Individuals.” MS Thesis, Curtin University of Technology, August 2005. The Age. “Investing in People Means Investing in the Future.” The Age 5 March, 2005. 15 April 2006 http://www.theage.com.au 〉 . Watson, Malcolm, et al. “Pathways to Aggression in Children and Adolescents.” Harvard Educational Review, 74.4 (Winter 2004): 404-428. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid, and Mark Balnaves. "Students “at Risk”: Dilemmas of Collaboration." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/04-kabirbalnaves.php 〉 . APA Style Kabir, N., and M. Balnaves. (May 2006) "Students “at Risk”: Dilemmas of Collaboration," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 from 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/04-kabirbalnaves.php 〉 .

Abstract: “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.” (unattributed, multiply-claimed)“What does it matter what the crackpots believe? It matters to the extent that others come to believe them.” (Daniel Patrick Moynihan)If the notion of being at home in one’s country is safe and reassuring, the homeland and the heartland of what we judge important, then the thought that a country needs its own homeland security is destined to create a sense of unease. Australia’s homeland security unit was set up in May 2003 (Riley), just weeks after the allies’ Coalition of the Willing had celebrated George W Bush’s declaration aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, of ‘Victory in Iraq’ (BBC). It might have been expected, in this victorious glow, that the country would feel confidently able to return to a state of security. Apparently however – if paradoxically – it is only necessary to set up a department of Homeland Security when a country feels insecure. In a country of insecurity – and the dimensions of that insecurity were to be researched and teased out over the months and years to come – there are likely to be some people who feel more or less secure. What might the reasons be for people to feel fearful in their own country?The discourse of terrorism has created and revealed significant divisions in Australian society, apparently unequalled since the Vietnam draft (if the size of the public protests before the 2003 Iraq War, and the polarisation of opinion since, is a gauge). At a time when the ‘imagined nation’ (Anderson) becomes more conflicted and less accessible as a result of such division and fear, a number of publications have concentrated upon the impacts of this changed national environment on Australia’s Muslim communities. Some commentators have identified threats to the conception of Australia as a welcoming country which embraces a multi-cultural vision of itself (Poynting and Noble; Manning ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers’). Clearly, in all this insecurity, the discourse of terrorism has directly impacted upon Australian perceptions of Australian others – and Australian constructions of Australian others – as well as upon perceptions of those others beyond the country’s borders.While attention has been paid elsewhere (Aly and Green ‘Moderate Islam’) to the binary perspectives of audience members who fear Bush’s global policies, and audience members who fear the actions and motives of the non-Western other (typically the ‘Islamic fundamentalist’); further narratives of country, belonging and security are also circulating. These stories may have less purchase in popular discourse simply because there is no ‘news hook’ upon which to hang them – or paradoxically as we discuss below, the news is ‘old news’ and is thus not considered newsworthy or dramatic enough. However, when researchers become aware of such discourses it becomes important to ask why some stories are hidden from view. Specifically, this paper pays attention to the fact that a national survey of levels of fear, comparing broader community Australians with Australian Muslims, found unexpectedly that the group which recorded the highest fear levels of all was the small number of people identifying themselves as Australian Jews. While the finding was from a sample of only 7 respondents, and while a cell size such as this is in line with acceptable statistical expectations for a sample of 573 (see below), another 63 people identifying as Jewish voluntarily contacted the research team when they heard about the survey, with the aim of expressing their views. A further eighteen people, expressing extreme anti-Semitic sentiments, also voluntarily contacted the team. Thus of the 92 public callers to Mark Balnaves, the Chief Investigator who was the contact point for responses to the survey, 81 constructed Jewishness and Jewish identity as a relevant prompt for their comment.    In terms of the original project, 750 people were interviewed over the telephone and agreed to complete a survey assessing their levels of fear. The survey is reported elsewhere (Aly and Balnaves ‘They want us to be afraid’; Aly, Balnaves and Chalon). Of these 750 respondents, Australian Muslims were disproportionately sampled with 177 respondents identifying themselves in this way (although only 105 interviewees actually gave their faith as Islamic indicating that a significant proportion might have been secular, or non-practicing, Australian Muslims). This community was over-represented in order to obtain a statistically robust sample for analysing discourses of terrorism and the other. Thus the respondents who did not identify as Islamic represented 573 interviewees, and the 7 Jewish respondents constituted over 1% of these, which – given a proportion of secular and non-religious Jews – may tie in with the 0.4% of 2006 Census respondents giving their religion as Jewish (ABS). These small Jewish Census numbers have to be read with caution. It is not unusual for respondents to censuses who are fearful of possibly unpredictable futures to not disclose their religious or cultural affiliation.  Nonetheless, this is clearly not a statistically-significant sample. It was to avoid such small numbers that the survey had been set up to over-sample Muslim respondents in terms of their proportional representation in the Australian population.The proportion of respondents to the fear survey identifying with major religious groupings was:Religion (Question 5) FrequencyPercentValid PercentCumulative PercentChristian46662.162.162.1Buddhist131.71.763.9Islamic10514.014.077.9Jewish7.9.978.8Other - specify374.94.983.7None11815.715.799.5Refused4.5.5100.0Total750100.0100.0 While it was not self-evident prior to undertaking this research that Australian Muslims would necessarily present as more fearful than broader community Australians, this is in fact what happened. The results from Australian Jews and the overwhelmingly Jewish-focussed public responses to the survey, however, were totally unexpected by the researchers – none of whom is Jewish. Green and Balnaves invited Bloustien, a cultural anthropologist, to join them in interrogating these issues around Jewish-ness in Australia. The authors started by exploring several related questions in this preliminary paper: firstly, whether these findings might be representative of a generalisable outcome and, if so, the factors which might explain it. Secondly, why these findings had been so unexpected to the researchers in a study of Australian community perceptions of fear: what clues might have been overlooked and why? Thirdly, how could we start to unravel the complex emotion of fear and understand what it means for different citizens and communities in contemporary Australia?  As indicated above, the majority of the 92 calls from Perth and interstate, enquiring about the survey while it was being conducted and when it had a high news profile, were from Jewish (63) and overtly anti-Semitic (18) members of the community.  The latter were from those who insisted that it was the Jewish population that was responsible for the terror started on 9/11, thus tapping into one of the many conspiracy theories that circulate in the electronic and digital media:In addition to causing massive loss of life, the attacks spawned a host of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that implicated the Jews and Israel in the bloodshed. As it turns out, those canards were not fleeting expressions of paranoid fantasy that dissipated once they were debunked. On the contrary, nearly five years later, the various ‘Jews-did-it’ scenarios emanating from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have proven stubbornly resilient. ‘If anything, they’re flourishing,’ says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank based in Somerville, Mass. (Greenberg) The callers to the University would not have had to look very far to find what they took to be ‘documentary proof’ offered for Jewish perfidy. Anti-Semitic websites offer ‘evidence’ for a range of theories, including that there was an international Jewish conspiracy, with identified United States Senators as part of the conspiracy. Barkun argues that these anti-Semitic explanations represent a “closed system of ideas that is structured so that it is impossible to disprove” (Barkun; Pipes ‘Conspiracy’, ‘Hidden hand’). The 81 Jewish-related calls from the community noted above do not count as a statistically representative probability sample of any defined sampling frame.  However, they highlight the fact that Jewish communities are a section of the Australian population who, historically, have an interest in shifts in public opinion that lead to social isolation. The first enquiry to Mark Balnaves following national publicity about the survey was from an elderly Australian Jewish Perth resident. He had heard about the survey from friends and was concerned that public opinion in Australia was turning against those who were perceived as different. His comment was “We are next!”Although the kinds of fears expressed by members of Australia’s Muslim communities have been discussed elsewhere (Exploding media myths), part of the genesis of that fear is located in the inability of some communities to see their experiences and perceptions reflected in mainstream media coverage. According to Noelle-Neumann (‘Spiral of silence’, ‘Turbulences’), people who think they represent a minority view tend to keep quiet in public debates, whereas those who think they represent a majority point of view tend to make their views known. As most public debates are mass mediated (and are rarely conducted in solely interpersonal contexts in modern societies), most people have no way of finding out what the majority’s thoughts are other than relying on news coverage and public opinion polls. People make judgements about whether they are in the majority or a minority concerning a specific issue and if they think they are in the minority, and the issue is important to them, they will often keep silent for fear of social isolation. Public opinion polls, interestingly, cannot for the most part pick up the spiral of silence because people are responding to their perceptions of what the majority think, or against the questions the pollster has put (Altheide; Fletcher; Foyle).With the departure of the Howard Government ‘fear’ is not simply ‘old news’. The elderly Jewish caller, afraid that his community was in trouble, may not be part of a ‘representative statistical sample’ but he certainly represents himself, as the other callers represented themselves. The fear survey was designed to elicit a fairly quick overview against a summative scale of people’s sense of fearfulness within the community. In truth, the results should – in a country like Australia – show almost no-one perceiving themselves as fearful of living in our society.Why might Jewish people particularly feel so fearful in their own country? In a rush to respond to changing perceptions of Australian Muslims in the aftermath of the Tampa incident (August 2001) and the 9/11 attacks on the US, studies such as Dunn and Mahtani’s (‘Media representations of ethnic minorities’) indicated that more than two-thirds of those surveyed believed that humanity could be sorted into natural categories of race, with the majority feeling that Australia was “weakened” by people of different ethnic origins. While race, ethnicity and religion are all highly significant in terms of being different dimensions of an individual’s identity, the indication from responses of those with particular religious affiliations, such as Jewish and Muslim Australians, is that when levels of fear increase, levels of security decrease. People who feel a ‘sense of otherness’ in these processes unite behind the identity which feels to them in most need of protecting (Aly and Green, ‘Less than equal’). The impact is that the highly diverse ethnicities which might otherwise characterise Australian Muslims (with some 64 ethnicities and language groups [Lewis and Hassan] ) are seen as less relevant in terms of an individual’s identity than their over-arching cultural identification as Muslim. So while studies of Australian fearfulness have understandably raised concerns over an ‘Atmosfear of Terror’ (Aly and Balnaves) among Australian Muslims, little attention has been paid to the effects of polarisation of the sense of home and country upon minority Australian communities not identifying with Islam. This finding that (a very small sample of) Australian Jewish respondents registered highly on the fear scale ties in with the discomforts indicated by Dunn and Mahtani’s study, and a possibly generalised concern with the sense of a nation polarising around factors of ethnicity, culture and religion (rather than taking these for granted as everyday differences). In this respect it might be said that Australian Jews were equally concerned, along with Australian Muslims, but this is not necessarily so, and was certainly not what was indicated in the public responses to Mark Balnaves. The disproportionate response to the survey findings indicated that Australian Jews were highly concerned: possibly because the discussions were only in terms of Australian Muslims. Even though the media and commentary predominantly focused on Muslim identities, it seemed to be the case that people identifying with Judaism felt equally – or, possibly, even more – isolated than Muslims did.Accounting for the High Level of Fear Amongst Jewish AustraliansQuestions raised by the unexpected results and reactions to the survey are only surprising if one considers that the majority of people in Australian should feel safe, and that there is no reason for them to feel otherwise. That is, it is making an assumption that once people come to Australia they (can) leave behind their cultural backgrounds and align their fears and perceptions with those held by the majority.  While many Jewish Australians are involved, very active, well-established and indeed celebrated members of their communities and professions, history has taught Jewish communities, possibly more than any other, that circumstances can alter rapidly. However well Jewish people considered they were assimilated, the past has shown that political climates can change – and in doing so can change that sense of security and sense of belonging over night. Even in democracies, public opinion can become suddenly negative and translate itself into legislation and repressive laws. Already in Australia the government lists Muslims it likes as ‘moderate Muslims’, with pointers as to how this should be identified (Aly and Green, ‘Moderate Islam’). In Nazi Germany the legislation defined what constituted ‘Aryan’, while what was considered ‘Jewish’ was first defined then persecuted through harassment, torture and death (Friedlander 158). When particular communities experience such labelling inter-generationally and first hand, and suffer its outcomes, it is not surprising that many do not readily experience or express a secure sense of belonging, in old or new countries. When considering the reasons for the high levels of fear expressed by the Jewish respondents and the later voluntary callers who identified as Jewish, it is relevant to acknowledge the ongoing existence and impact of anti-Semitism. Indeed, clear evidence of such anti-Semitism was also offered in the form of the 18 anti-Semitic calls made to Mark Balnaves by people who saw Jews and Jewish influences as being behind the 9/11 atrocities. We can address the impacts of anti-Semitism under two main headings: a) Self-perception: historical experience and contemporary experience;b) Framing as outsiders and labelling by others: discourses of difference. Self-Perception: Historical ExperienceMany if not most of the Jewish population in Australia – perhaps including the elderly caller whose comment is contained in the title of this paper – would be living survivors of (or descendents of) the Holocaust; or refugees from pogroms in other countries post Second World War. Persecution of Jewish populations did not start with Nazi Germany, nor did it stop at the end of the Second World War. In fact, some of the worst state-sanctioned examples of Jewish persecution occurred in Europe after 1945 (Geller; Stephen Roth Institute). UN Watch, a non-governmental organization based in Geneva and partly funded by US Jewish organisations, whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations, published a November 2007 report on the overall inaction (and indeed sometimes the complicity) of the UN on issues of anti-Semitism (UN Watch report). With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the wane of Communism’s influence more generally, anti-Semitism in Europe has increased. This is partly because authoritarian Communist regimes tended to keep expressions of extreme nationalism and religious fervour in check (Urban).While Jewish individuals and communities come to Australia believing that they have the opportunity for religious and cultural freedom in a welcoming and democratic country, previous experience has taught many to be wary. For some, anxiety is never far away, and is re-confirmed even in Australian daily life. For example, in the Stephen Roth Institute report on Australia, 765 reports of anti-Jewish violence, vandalism, harassment and intimidation were logged in 2007, represented the highest total since national record-keeping began in 1989. Such anti-Semitism does not seem to be restricted to right-wing groups as the report indicates: Although the many small groups that comprise the Australian far left often make declarations critical of racism in all its forms, demonization of Israel is a common thread and the extremes of language used to condemn Zionism and Israel promote a mythology of a powerful, evil Jewish ‘internationalism’, almost indistinguishable from that depicted by the far right.Whether such ‘demonization’ is straight-forwardly anti-Semitism – or whether it constitutes a more nuanced contribution to a wider anti-Imperialism (and sometimes anti-US) discourse which tends to oppose Israeli and Zionist policies with regards to Palestine – is not the issue here. It raises anxiety among Australian Jewish communities that becomes particularly acute when public discourses reiterating old stereotypes and exclusionary ideologies circulate through the media and the public sphere. Recent calls by the Anti-Defamation Commission for the Victorian police to tackle more robustly verbal and physical anti-Semitic attacks, were rejected on the grounds that the police believed the accounts of anti-Semitic attacks were exaggerated “to justify greater taxpayer-funded security measures,” the implication being that if the Jewish community wanted greater security they should pay for it themselves (Kerbaj).  Self-Perception: Contemporary Experience The notion of Jewish communities being under threat is not solely a perception, but the result of repeated direct experiences. These direct experiences are in the form of documented physical attacks on individuals and organisations (as recorded by The Stephen Roth Institute, for example). Individual high profile members of Jewish communities receive death threats; grave sites are vandalised, and buildings such as schools and synagogues are fire-bombed. Following the failure of the Oslo Accords (signed in 1993), the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000) and then the attacks on the US on September 11 2001, violence aimed at Jewish people and property increased – in Australia and around the world:In September 2000, the synagogue in Rosco Street in Bondi was attacked by arson while anti-Israel graffiti was daubed on the Illawarra Synagogue in Sydney’s South. The Canberra Jewish centre was fire-bombed four times between September 2001 and September 2002. Individual Jews, particularly men wearing skullcaps, were physically attacked, while community leaders received death threats. Violence and Jew-hatred manifested themselves in the pro-Palestinian rallies of 2000 and 2001, with the burning of Israeli and US flags. Such outbursts created fear and anxiety amongst Australian Jewry and the wider community. (Rutland) Attacks do not have to be physical to have the effect of raising anxiety in a smaller community and creating a sense of exclusion from the broader community. On 6 April 2002, an open letter was published in the The Guardian (Guardian, ‘More pressure for Mid-East peace’). It called for a international boycott of all cultural and research links with Israel until the Israeli government was prepared to open “serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians, along the lines proposed in many peace plans including most recently that sponsored by the Saudis and the Arab League.” That call was echoed in Australia, with a number of high profile Australian academics also calling for boycotts. These resolutions are part of an ongoing series which Julius and Dershowitz describe as “an act of violence, thoug h of a paradoxical kind – one of recoil and expulsion rather than assault.” Jewish Diasporic IdentitiesAs with almost every cultural group apart from those living in their traditional lands, communities which identify as Jewish regard themselves as belonging to a (global) diaspora. That is, Australian (local) members of the Jewish diaspora consider they are “living away from the geographical region identified as the heartland of [their] cultural tradition” (Green 130). While Australia’s Jewish community may feel themselves to be more or less well integrated within their host nation, the notion of diaspora functions as a discourse to construct the diasporic nation in ways analogous to Anderson’s imagined community. Given (as we have suggested earlier) that people who perceive themselves as being ‘othered’ may band together to protect the identity which feels most threatened, it may not be surprising that some Australian Jews indicate an attenuated sense of security.   Friedman argues that “the processes that create the context in which identity is practiced constitute a global arena of potential identity formation” (117). Here he foregrounds the work of the individual subject in drawing upon a range of influences to construct personal histories which inform the practices of the self. Processes involved in identity formation include such socially-constructed parameters as age, gender, class, ethnicity, cultural context, sexual orientation and religious affiliation. Dayan argues that the construction of a diasporic identity balances discourses generated within the global diasporic community with those produced elsewhere – including discourses emanating from the local (‘host’) country which may be more or less positive. Identity creation is an ongoing individual activity which produces the individual subject through the negotiation of the range of alternative discourses. Some aspects of available discursive identities will be appropriated while others will be confronted or rejected. Within these contexts, people can be seen to practice a range of identities. Dayan highlights the work of what he terms “particularistic media” in constituting a “micro public sphere” (103) which include physical and symbolic elements and understandings circulating among participants. These constructed understandings integrate the global identity in the context of a shared past. To such media can be added everyday practices – such as those of cooking and eating – and rite of passage rituals marking birth, coming of age, marriage and death. Relevant elements of material and social culture include newsletters, icons, photographs, travel, worship, meetings and greetings and web-based interactions – often consumed in a local context. The aim of particularistic media in a diasporic community, argues Dayan, “is not to create new identities but to prevent the death of existing ones” (110). In an environment where difference has been made problematic, engagement with such media and participation in such practices may increase the tension between the global and the local; and between the diaspora and the host nation of which they are a part and in which they live. This is not to presume the homogeneity of the Australian population, nor the uniformity of Australian Jews (who also form part of the culturally diverse wider Australia) – but it does indicate that both host and diaspora construct those who are ‘othered’ as engaging in specific practices through which the community may be identified. These practices include what Dayan refers to as the ‘rediscovery’ or ‘reinvention’ of tradition. They integrate the historic and global Jewish community over time and across space – differentiating that community from some dominant traditions of the local, Australian nation.   Framing as Outsiders and Labelling by Others: Discourses of Difference Possibly one of the greatest reasons for Australian Jewish communities’ sense of unease and sense of being outsiders is the framing and labelling that occurs in popular discourses circulated in the media. Regular accounts of assumed Jewish political  ‘influence’ and wealth have the effect of creating a fictionalised homogenised (caricaturised) Jewish identity at the expense of the real Australian citizen who also happens to be Jewish. While the possession of influence and wealth is undoubtedly true for many Australians from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds, the kind of libels to which Jewish Australians are subjected include the circulation of published virulent anti-Semitic literature (for example ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, a forgery that claims to describe a secret Jewish conspiracy for world domination which is still promoted  and offered as evidence supporting anti-Semitism in many countries today: Jacobs and Weitzman). The lack of knowledge by the wider Australian community about the diversity and nature of Jewish culture, and perceived misunderstandings about Israeli society, impact on how Jewish Australian citizens can feel ‘othered’ in their everyday social encounters. Most non-Jewish Australians do not realise the breadth of ethnic backgrounds that are incorporated under the umbrella of Jewish culture. Across Australia, while Jewish communities frequently self-identify as coming from Ashkenazi (originally German speaking) or Sephardic (originally Spanish speaking) backgrounds, these definitions themselves fail to record the diversity of communities from Hungary, Poland, Russia, Eastern Europe, France, Italy, North Africa, Turkey, Asia Minor, the Netherlands, England, North and South America, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, India, the US, Israel and more recently arrived Ethiopian Jewry, as well as those people who through intermarriage and conversion originate from far East Asia. Within these mixed populations are communities which identify with particular religious traditions such as Hassidic, Orthodox, Progressive, Reform, Re-constructionist and also those who consider themselves secular but who still identify with Jewish culture and tradition. As demonstrated in the research with Australian Muslims (Aly and Green, ‘Less than equal’), the complexity of what lies behind the simplicity of labels is important as we consider why some groups are far more fearful than others in Australia. The Role of the Media in Framing the ‘Other’In their report of the classic Project Revere study, DeFleur and Larsen (‘The flow of information’) show that as stimulus intensity – the repetition of a message – increases, the proportion of people who get the information will also increase but not in direct proportion to the increasing number of repetitions.  Doubling the number of repetitions does not translate to doubling the number of people in the know. Arguably, stimulus intensity also affects the half-life of information and knowledge – lessons learned painfully, and often, become deeply ingrained and it may be hard to move on from these; even given a change of country, a new start, or even a new generation.  We are aware that perceptions of risk are firmly linked to bio-social markers. Lupton and Tulloch (‘Risk is part of your life’) point to the growing body of sociological research that investigates ways in which people respond to risk and identified that factors such as “gender, age and sexual identity [were implicated] in structuring risk perceptions”. The notion that historical experiences can heighten a sense of risk for an Australian community in the present, in the absence of specific drivers for this, is significant since many cultural studies approaches to dealing with contemporary political issues may not fully acknowledge the creation of new understandings through the integration of news and information with existing historical and cultural knowledges shared within the diasporic community.Cultivation theory (Shanahan and Morgan) can explain some aspects of the phenomenon of pervasive fear, as do Cohen’s theories about moral panics. What we tell ourselves about the causes, consequences and cures of fear constitutes a significant proportion of the media product currently consumed by Australian audiences. Popular culture examples of this discourse of fear include Channel 7’s ratings leader Border Security, “Australia’s frontline” in the quest for a secure homeland. To a diasporic community which constructs itself as having a particular experience of isolation and exclusion – whether in Australia or abroad – continual media repetition of the fear motif would be an invitation to a spiral of concern. In Western democracies like Australia the mass media have considerable freedom accorded to them in the expectation that they will both diffuse political information and act as watchdogs on the custodians of the body politic – governments, departments, institutions and the like. At the same time, formal attempts to build reassurance (‘Alert but not alarmed’) may backfire. Aldoory, for example, found that government messages of reassurance have often failed because the context in which those messages are to be received is poorly understood at a sub-cultural level. While most of the work on diffusion of information focuses either on ‘mass media’ environments or on ‘interpersonal’ contexts, few studies have explored the intersection of both and how adoption and diffusion relate to democratic processes (Balnaves et al; Goot; Manning, ‘Voting behaviour’). Clearly, however, the processes by which information is adopted and diffused have an important effect on how public opinion is formed within communities. In the Australian context, an understandable recent research focus on Australian Muslims should not obscure the relevance of pervasive fears which deeply concern Australian Jews. 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