Imaginaries of fear: journalism and urban violence analyzes a series of stories on violent crimes published between 2004 and 2007 on newspapers of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, relating them to the production of an urban imaginary. It intends to show how the stories published on these periodicals contribute to the making of a contemporary imaginary of fear through urban violence narration. This dissertation examines the types of enunciation and evocation of fear in the series of stories published on O Globo - 24 horas; Geografia da violência; A guerra do Rio - and Folha de S. Paulo - Guerra urbana. Two perspectives used by journalists are analyzed: one that sees violence as part of the everyday life, and the other one in which urban violence is approached as a war metaphor. On these perspectives, the stories that focus on violent crimes in big cities produce a symbology and a vocabulary that constitute an urban imaginary of fear that affects the democratization practices of public space. Moreover, the emphasis on the issues related to the enforcement of the law by the police seems to simplify all the complexity that involves the idea of public security. That said, this fear`s imaginary - that is, the circulation of stories that have crime as main theme - is related to other issues, and leads to very important social, political, economic and cultural matters in contemporary Brazil.