On Moral Panic: Some Directions for Further Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Falkof
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Global South ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Further Development

This article is concerned with the continued salience of the notion of moral panic, an idea that has been both enormously influential in sociological and media research and has come under fire for various flaws. It reviews some of the most common critiques of moral panic, discussing why these are valid and where they fall short, and adds new comments on some weaknesses in the theory. It goes on to argue that the term and the idea of moral panic continue to have value as critical tools, but require updating. Suggested further developments include broadening moral panic to allow for analyses that consider the global south; taking account of the narrative layering that characterises these episodes; considering the intersection of moral panics and digital media; centralising fear and anxiety in moral panic research; considering moral panics as an interdisciplinary framework rather than as a strict model; and invoking a psychoanalytic rhetoric to further explain how moral panics work and what they do.

Smartphones, youth and moral panics: Exploring print and online media narratives in India

2020 ◽  
pp. 205015792092226
Author(s):  
Neomi Rao ◽  
Lakshmi Lingam
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Smartphone Technology ◽  
Smartphone Use ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Media Narratives

India is a rapidly growing youth market for smartphone technology. Accompanying the spike in Indian youths’ smartphone use is a proliferation of media coverage on the purported impact of smartphones on youths’ physical, psychological, and social well-being. We use a qualitative media analysis to show that the online and print media narratives around this issue reveal widespread fear and anxiety about youths’ smartphone use. We argue that this stems from a moral panic reaction to youths’, particularly young women’s, potential exercise of agency using their smartphones and accessing forbidden content over the internet. This narrative fails to include the potential affordances of internet access for youth and other marginalized people while also failing to address deeper concerns about digitization.

Moral panics by design: The case of terrorism

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 643-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

This article assesses the relationship between terrorism and moral panics to expand understandings of the latter’s eruption and orchestration. Answering calls for deeper considerations of folk devils’ agentic properties, it interrogates how terrorist methods – the deployment of shocking and exceptional violence to incite fear and stimulate political change – challenge extant understandings of the moral panic framework. Specifically, it argues, in the case of terrorism, that the exaggerated threats and disproportionate responses that define moral panics are not driven solely by moral entrepreneurs or social control agents, but are informed by the strategic practices and rationalities of folk devils themselves. Through its approach, this research enhances social-scientific treatments of terrorism, broadens the scope of moral panic analysis, and extends understandings of how fear and anxiety are manipulated for political purposes.

Moral panics and digital-media logic: Notes on a changing research agenda

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Hier
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Media Logic ◽  
And Control ◽  
Media Formats ◽  
Point Of Departure

This research note critically comments on the lack of attention that moral panic scholars are devoting to the ways in which changing digital media formats are reshaping the dynamics of interaction involved in public claims-making, modes of audience engagement, and techniques of regulation and control. Angela McRobbie and Sarah Thornton’s seminal deconstruction of conventional moral panic studies is used as a point of departure to supplement the logic of mass mediation with insights into some of the structuring principles that ground the logic of digital mediation.

Operational analysis: A method for observing and analyzing digital media operations

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482199864
Author(s):  
Kathrin Friedrich ◽  
A S Aurora Hoel
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Task Orientation ◽  
Operational Analysis ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Robotic Radiosurgery ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Operational Models ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Tracking Devices

Interventional digital media applications such as robotic surgery, remote-controlled vehicles or wearable tracking devices pose a challenge to media research methodologically as well as conceptually. How do we go about analyzing operational media, where human and non-human agencies intertwine in seemingly inscrutable ways? This article introduces the method of o perational analysis to systematically observe and critically analyze such situated, interventional and multilayered entanglements. Against the background of ongoing efforts to develop operational models for understanding digital media, the method of operational analysis conceptually ascribes to media technologies a real efficacy by approaching them as adaptive mediators. As an operational middle-range approach, it allows to integrate theoretical discussions with considerations of the situatedness, directedness, and task-orientation of operational media. The article presents an analytical toolbox for observing and analyzing digital media operations while simultaneously testing it on a particular application in robotic radiosurgery.

scholarly journals What we talk about when we talk about interactivity: Empowerment in public discourse

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1052-1071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marguerite Barry ◽  
Gavin Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Communication Events ◽  
Action Context ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Using Data

This study offers new insights into interactivity by examining its association with empowerment in public discourse. Using data from 20 years of newspaper coverage, a mixed methods analysis reveals different ‘modes’ of interactivity in discourse. Empowerment is the dominant mode of interactivity despite substantial changes in technologies and uses over this time. A content analysis shows that older discourses associate interactivity with specific technologies, while recent discourses use more universal terms. The discourse analysis illustrates the range of empowerment found in different interactive experiences, from basic data access to collaboration across communities, even reaching beyond communication events. The study offers a new model for understanding interactivity and empowerment based on the potential in communications for action, context, strategies and outcomes. This layered and flexible approach has appeal for digital media research and production.

scholarly journals US Moral Panics, Mexican Politics, and the Borderlands Origins of the War on Drugs, 1950–62

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-387
Author(s):  
Benjamin T. Smith ◽  
Wil G. Pansters
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Drug Policy ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Temporary Closure ◽  
Mexican Politics

During the 1950s Californian civil society advocates and politicians developed a moral panic over youth narcotic use. One of the key elements of this moral panic was the assertion that most drugs came over the border and that the only solution to this problem was blackmailing Mexico through temporary closure of the border. The idea not only became a tenet of later drug policy, but also, in conjunction with pressure from Mexico’s own moral reformers, forced regional politicians in Mexico to enact periodic clean up campaigns.

scholarly journals ‘Do We Look like Boy Racers?’ The Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Young Drivers ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Societal Reaction

This article addresses the failure of studies concerning moral panics to take into account the reaction of those individuals who are the subject of social anxiety. It responds to the suggestion by McRobbie and Thornton (1995) that studies of moral panic need to account for the role played by the ‘folk devils’ themselves, for a moral panic is a collective process (Young, 2007). The paper presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture in Aberdeen, qualitative interviews with members of outside groups, and content analysis of media articles. The societal reaction to the ‘boy racer’ subculture in Aberdeen is evidence of a contemporary moral panic. The media's representation of the subculture contributed to the stigmatization of young drivers and the labelling of the subculture's activities as deviant and antisocial. The drivers were aware of their negative portrayal in the media; however their attempts to change the myth of the ‘boy racer’ were unsuccessful. Although subcultural media can provide an outlet of self-expression for youths, these forms of media can also become caught-up in the moral panic. Ironically the youths’ own niche and micro media reified the (ir)rationality for the moral panic.

scholarly journals Cannabis, Moral Entrepreneurship, and Stigma: Conflicting Narratives on the 26 May 2016 Toronto Police Raid on Cannabis Shops

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-171
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Müller
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social World ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The Media ◽  
Police Raid ◽  
Do So

On May 26, 2016, the police raided 43 cannabis dispensaries in Toronto, Canada, making 90 arrests. This article aims to describe the narrative of the responsible state agencies concerning the police raid and compare it to the narrative of those who opposed it, such as activists, as well as consumers and sellers of cannabis. While such concepts as moral entrepreneur, moral panic, and moral crusade have traditionally been used to study those in power, I will employ them to explore both the state narrative and ways in which counterclaims-makers resisted it. In order to do so, I will further develop the concept of moral entrepreneurship and its characteristics by relating it to studies of moral panics and social problems. This article will be guided by the following question: How did each party socially construct its cannabis narrative, and in what way can we use the concept of moral entrepreneurship to describe and analyze these narratives as social constructions? I have investigated the media coverage of the raid and ethnographically studied shops in Toronto in order to study the narratives. My findings show that both parties used a factual neutral style, as well as a dramatizing style. The later includes such typical crusading strategies as constructing victims and villains and presenting the image of a dystopian social world. In order to explain the use of these strategies, we will relate them to the shifting wider social and historical context and to the symbolic connotation of cannabis shops in Toronto in particular and in Canada as a whole.

Sex and the Devil: Homosexuality, Satanism, and Moral Panic in Late Apartheid South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Falkof
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
White Male ◽  
White Men ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Sanitation And Hygiene ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Male Homosexuals

This article discusses the discursive and narrative intersections between two moral panics that appeared in the white South African press in the last years of apartheid: the first around the claimed danger posed by white male homosexuals, the second around the alleged incursion of a criminal cult of white Satanists. This connection was sometimes implicit, when the rhetoric attached to one was repeated with reference to the other, and sometimes explicit, when journalists and moral entrepreneurs conflated the two in public dialogue. Both Satanists and gay white men were characterized as indulging in abnormal practices that were dangerous to the health of the nation, using a long-standing colonial metaphor of sanitation and hygiene. I argue that fears of homosexuality and beliefs in Satanism operated as social control measures for disciplining potentially unruly groups whose sexual or personal practices were not admissible within apartheid’s injunctions on homogenous conformity among whites. The connection between homosexuality and Satanism, like the connection between homosexuality and communism, served to pathologize whites whose disobedient bodies and beliefs were considered treacherous.

BOLD Ideas for Creative Social Networking

2015 ◽  
pp. 417-429
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Cheris Kramarae
Keyword(s):  
Research And Development ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
The World ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Networking Technologies

To further open the conversation about women's empowerment and global collaborations using new networking technologies, this chapter problematizes some prevalent ideas about creativity and social networking, notes suggested change that carry anti-feminist sentiments throughout the world, and suggests a number of ways that women and men can all benefit from an opening of queries about innovative ways of working together online. With the suggested expansions, the authors welcome more inclusive and invitational discussion about future digital media research and development.

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