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Perhaps by virtue of its theoretical slipperiness, collective identity is often hailed as an important feature of social movements for the role it plays in unifying activists and organizations, and so helping them to develop shared concerns and engage in collective action. However, this paper argues that collective identity is the result of group rather than movement level processes, and although it can unite activists within a single movement organization, it is not always beneficial for the broader social movement. Although movements consist of networks of activists and organizations that have a broad shared concern, differing collective identities within the movement can actually be quite divisive. Based on case studies of three organizations in the environmental movement, this paper shows that activists who are most committed to an organization with an encompassing collective identity develop a strong sense of solidarity with other activists similarly committed to that organization. The resultant solidarity leads to the construction of a ‘we–them’ dichotomy between organizations within the same movement, increasing the chances of hostility between organizations and factions within the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the sociology of moral panic, this paper argues that the media will shift from alarming to reassuring coverage when a `hot crisis' portends a possible grass root panic. To determine whether this moderation effect follows from dread-inspiring events that are developing in unpredictable and potentially threatening ways, the paper compares newspaper and magazine coverage of emerging diseases with their coverage of Ebola Zaire. The results reveal that the mutation-contagion package, with its frightful account of emerging diseases, was quickly abandoned and subverted during the Ebola epidemic. In its place, the media fashion a containment package that uses a strategy of 'othering' to allay the fear. The conclusion discusses the flexibility in the tool kits used by the media to frame events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing moral panic with the potential catastrophes of the risk society, Sheldon Ungar contends that new sites of social anxiety emerging around nuclear, medical, environmental and chemical threats have thrown into relief many of the questions motivating moral panic research agendas. He argues that shifting sites of social anxiety necessitate a rethinking of theoretical, methodological and conceptual issues related to processes of social control, claims making and general perceptions of public safety. This paper charts an alternative trajectory, asserting that analytic priority rests not with an understanding of the implications of changing but converging sites of social anxiety. Concentrating on the converging sites of social anxiety in late modernity, the analysis forecasts a proliferation of moral panics as an exaggerated symptom of the heightened sense of uncertainty purported to accompany the ascendency of the risk society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the importance of class divisions within agrarian populations for understanding agrarian collective action. To illustrate, the author describes agrarian class structure and collective action in Ireland during the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century, there was a social cleavage between occupying tenants and landowners, but there was also a cleavage among occupying tenants themselves. Both types of cleavage had a noticeable effect on the character of collective action. Subsequently, a major transformation in the class structure reduced the intensity of the social cleavage between large and small tenant farmers, and at the same time tenant farmers became numerically the largest social group in the rural society, thus laying the social basis for collective action by this social group. There are two principal arguments made in this paper: first, that agrarian populations are often split into distinguishable social classes, which do not all share the same basis for opposing non-agrarian elites and may even come into conflict with one another; and second, that different agrarian class structures give rise to different kinds of collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the social movement literature contains two main traditions for relating social change to collective behaviour, both of which appear sensible at the macro-social level but, when ‘unpacked’ to the level of models of individual motivation, become implausible. The case of the conversion of the Scottish Highlanders to evangelical Protestantism in the late eighteenth century is used as an example of how, by using themes from interactionist sociology, a causal account of social change and collective behaviour can be constructed which does not involve reductionist and unlikely treatments of actors' motivation, and which does not make the ideology of the social movement epiphenomenal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive survey of the use of the term `moral panic' from its coinage in 1972 until the present day. It traces the evolution of the term in academic sociology and criminology, its adoption by the media in the mid- 1980s and its subsequent employment in the national press. It shows how and why the term changed its meaning, and how far its use in academic discourse affected its use in the media. The article traces the development of `moral panic' in the media, where it was first used pejoratively, then rejected for being pejorative, and finally rehabilitated as a term of approval. It explains why the term developed as it did: how it enabled journalists to justify the moral and social role of the media, and also to support the reassertion of `family values' in the early 1990s. The article concludes by considering the relationship between `moral panic' and moral language in general. This is a more speculative analysis of the term, drawing on the work of moral philosophers and attempting to predict how `moral panic' may develop in the future. `Moral panic', I suggest, is an unsatisfactory form of moral language which may adversely affect the media's ability to handle moral issues seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]