LNELecture Notes in Education, Arts, Management and Social Science3083-10912705-053XBio-Byword Scientific Publishing Pty. Ltd.10.26689/LNE.v4i7.15952ArticleFear Transcoding: A Comparative Study of True Crime Narratives and Fictional Horror Filmshttps://artdesignp.com/journal/LNE/4/7/10.26689/LNE.v4i7.15952LiuTongzhou,ZhangYibo,MengXiuhuan2026472026-07-26In the risk society and digital media, fear has become a flourishing cultural consumption. Comparing true crime narratives with horror films, this study integrates narratology, cultural studies, and terror management theory across five dimensions: fear sources, narrative logic, construction of security, audience contracts, and media-sensory experience. Horror translates premodern and posthuman anxieties into supernatural others by symbolic encoding, achieving ritualized purification; true crime confronts modernity’s systemic crises by documentary encoding, eliciting risk alertness through open endings. The two are complementary, transcoding fear from “supernatural mystery” to “social pathology.”True crime narrative, Fictional horror film, Fear transcoding, Risk society, Collective anxiety

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