Foreword: Moral panics in the contemporary world (original) (raw)
Related papers
The idea of moral panic – ten dimensions of dispute
Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 2011
This paper explores the open and contested concept of moral panic over its 40-year history, exploring the contributions made by the concept’s key originators, as well as contemporary researchers. While most moral panic researchers are critical, humanist, interpretivist, interventionist and qualitative, this paper highlights ten areas of productive dispute within and around the meaning of moral panic theory’s ‘common sense’. Such diversity of interpretation creates multiple possibilities for convergent and divergent theorization and research within a supposedly singular conceptual framework. This lack of closure and consequent diversity of political standpoints, intellectual perspectives and fields of empirical focus, rather than representing the weakness of the concept of moral panic, reflects and contributes to its successful diffusion, escalation and innovation.
Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 2008
The article develops a critical analysis of the concept of moral panic and its sociological uses. Arguing that some of the concept's subtlety and power has been lost as the term has become popular, the article foregrounds its Freudian and Durkheimian aspects and explicates the epistemological and ethical issues involved in its use. Contrasting the dynamics of moral panics to the dynamics of culture wars, the author shows that both phenomena involve group relations and status competition, though each displays a characteristically different structure. The piece concludes by situating `moral panics' within a larger typology of concepts utilized in the sociology of social reaction.
Moral panic: From sociological concept to public discourse
Crime, Media, Culture, 2009
This paper examines the nature and extent of news reports using the sociological concept, `moral panic' (MP). Qualitative content analysis reveals that moral panic is commonly used in news reports in the USA, UK, Australia, and other countries, but it is more likely to be compatible with print (e.g. newspaper) formats than television reports. It is also widely used in literary and art reviews, editorials and op-ed pieces, often by social scientists. Use of the concept has increased over the last decade, particularly in news reports as part of an `opposing' voice or the `other side' of articles about deviant behavior, sexual behavior, and drug use. It is suggested that moral panic as `opposition' fits the entertainment news format, and while this sustains its use by writers and familiarity to audience members, it also appears to be associated with certain topics (e.g. sex and drugs), but not others, such as terrorism in the mainstream media. Questions are raised for a...
2015
This has been subject to criticism; "Like much in Ireland, the criminological 'moral panic' bandwagon is imported. It set off from Britain in the late 1970s and arrived here some 20 years later ... Criminologists here are still riding; around on a 1970s' bandwagon, Irish style. Whereas the majority of British criminologists became aware that the term 'moral panics' is best paired with its original partner 'folk devils', to their Irish counterparts, the phrase is synonymous with 'overreation' to a 'low crime rate'. The reductio ad absurdum of the moral panic theory is the argument that the murder of investigative journalist Veronica Guerin and the ensuing coverage of organised crime by the media incited a moral panic among the Irish public ... ".
‘ Good Moral Panics ’ and the Late Modern Condition
2013
The aim of the following paper is to provide and an overview of the concept of ‘moral panics’, discuss new developments in the sociology of deviance and the possibility of applying the ‘moral panic’ discourse in analysing ‘good’ moral panics.
in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and political Movements edited by David A. Snow, Donatella Della Porta, Bert Klandermans, Doug McAdam, Oxford, John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
A Hybrid Model of Moral Panics: Synthesizing the Theory and Practice of Moral Panic Research
Sociology Compass, 2010
We seek to address criticisms of the concept of moral panics by offering a hybrid model of moral panics (MPs) that synthesizes theory and practice of MPs research. A review of the literature on MPs from sociology, media studies and related fields shows a wide variety of usage and lack of conceptual clarity of the term moral panic. Yet there are few articles explaining how to analyze MPs. We present a theoretical clarification of MPs by addressing elements of scope, intensity and reception, to create distinction from other related theoretical concepts. In order to develop a working method for researching MPs, one must have an understanding of social conditions that give rise to, sustain and result in the success or failure of MPs, as well as possible lasting effects. We synthesize Cohenʹs process-oriented model of MPs and Goode & Ben-Yehudaʹs attribution-oriented model of MPs, creating a critical hybrid model of moral panics that integrates processes and attributes. We then utilize the hybrid model to offer practical suggestions for researching and analyzing the conditions, processes and effects of MPs, in the hopes of encouraging a more rigorous research agenda for scholars of moral panics.