Public Awareness

I was reading this article, which was in my feed from NYT, and was intrigued by this quote, in which a professor at Penn State is talking about grabbing the public's attention and focusing it on an issue. I think the quote or the idea behind it can easily be generalized to include any effort to raise public awareness or garner media attention.
via
Sex crimes became a media sensation. Though the overwhelming majority of offenses against kids — 80 percent to 90 percent — are committed by someone the victim knows, the news media focused on the rare and very chilling rapes and murders of young girls by strangers. Children as sex offenders became the next obvious step in our national anxiety about sex crimes, Philip Jenkins, author of “Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America” and a professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, told me. “First it’s adult predators, and then it’s what about children? To draw attention, you have to up the ante. The issue moves up a notch, and you can’t move it back easily.”