It's not just politicized propaganda. A lot of unsafety feeling is almost self-inflicted.

In my opinion apps like the Citizen[0] app are some of the worst offenders. They constantly bombard you with scary notifications, creating a constant environment of fear. With that app people are constantly aware of things that are happening in your general area without any real benefit of informing you. It turns the mildly-annoying-but-ignoreable mentally ill person on the street corner from someone that "scares" the 10 people around them into someone that scares 10k people in the area.

Oh, and Citizen is also directly integrated into Axon's Flock-like surveillance product.

[0]: https://citizen.com/