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A large body of work has examined the relationship between population composition and risk of victimization. Past research has also suggested that the nature of political rhetoric may have profound impacts on perceived threat, fear of crime, and moral panic. This study constitutes the first attempt to examine the relationships between the negative political articulation of both immigration and multiculturalism by extreme right-wing parties and the perception of unsafety risk in European countries. We employ data from the 2018 European Social Survey (ESS), which we merge with data from the Manifesto Project Dataset, a comparative dataset on political statements. The results reveal that individuals who reside in countries with higher levels of negative political articulation of immigration and multiculturalism express greater perceived unsafety. The results also show that higher levels of perceived immigrant threat amplify the relationship between negative political articulation of immigration and perceived unsafety. Finally, news exposure amplifies the effect of the negative political articulation of immigration on the perception of unsafety when perceived immigrant threat is higher. Our findings underscore the importance of the political context and the potential of political elites to shape public perceptions, including the perception of unsafety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial from the Journal of Communication Inquiry, discussing the importance of studying sex and sexuality in communication research. The author highlights the lack of coverage of sex in media discourse, despite its prevalence in the media. The special issue of the journal explores the intersection of sex and the press, covering topics such as FOSTA-SESTA legislation, magazine empires like Playboy, and issues related to race, transgender identity, and sexual orientation. The author emphasizes the need for scholars to engage with these topics and challenges the societal restrictions on discussing sex and sexuality. [Extracted from the article]

This article makes the case that electric micromobilities (EMMs) are the site of a moral panic and employs the lens of mobility justice to explain it. Through analysis of scholarly and media discourse, interviews with, and social media content produced by, EMM riders (eriders), and the auto ethnographic experiences of the lead author as an electric unicycle rider in daily life, as a participant in online and offline "erider" communities, and as a food delivery worker, we reinforce the conclusion that alternate mobilities face an uphill battle in gaining legitimacy and inclusion in transportation policy and infrastructure. While this is not a new finding—alternate mobilities have a long history of being demonized and excluded—this article offers insight into how individuals who find themselves unwitting scapegoats in conflicts over public space consciously engage in deliberate actions to resist EMM panic and achieve greater mobility justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 5 years the UK has seen a significant rise in the prominence of trans-exclusionary feminism. What was once termed TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminism/feminist) is now more often referred to as gender critical feminism/feminist. In this article I argue that this new moniker represents more than a renaming. Instead, it can be interpreted as a rebranding for a present-day where the explicit transphobia of earlier trans-exclusionary feminism is no longer tolerated. I will map two telling changes that I argue currently separates gender critical from TERF, this involves (i) the linguistic pivot from 'anti-trans' to 'pro-woman' and, (ii) the nascent questioning of the traditional theoretical underpinning of trans-exclusionary feminism. Through this mapping I will explain the rebranding as an attempted claim to legitimacy with an aim of accruing mainstream support. However, exploration of the two changes will show that, despite efforts to obscure the point, gender critical feminism continues to rely on transphobic tropes, moral panics and essentialist understandings of men and women. These factors also continue to link trans-exclusionary feminism to anti-feminist reactionary politics and other 'anti-gender' movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The out-of-school time (OST) field in the United States has a complex history. The push to offer programming reflects a legacy rooted in moral panics about racially minoritized youth. However, this field is populated by community spaces that act as multipurpose sites of culturally sustaining educational practices supporting positive youth development. We report findings from interviews with OST leaders, youth workers, policy influencers, and youth about how to create, sustain, and protect more liberatory and humanizing practices, demonstrating that racism and deficit-based thinking continue to inform programmatic practices and youth experiences. Furthermore, this study reveals that programs with expansive ideas of youth voice, healing justice, and whole-child approaches to youth development create better opportunities for connection and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the affective entanglements and queer/ed intimacies in post-Soviet Estonia by analyzing ethnographic fieldwork. To build an intersectionally engaged analysis, the article employs Karen Barad's agential realist model of intra-actions to show how intimate relationships are tied to socio-economic status and cultural setting. In Estonia, intimacy is framed by a homophobic discourse that erases anything but heteronormativity. This public erasure produces, on the one hand, moral panics and, on the other hand, affectively complex intimate entanglements among queer/ed subjects. The empirical analysis discusses conversations with five straight and queer women that contain rich affective narratives. It investigates how a person's economic situation relates to their intimate relationship choice in a social sphere that is dominated by nationalist discourse and neoliberal rationality. This has created contradictory affective responses that are unpacked and contextualized in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead, the sceptics, and Falkof, places the plasma gang within the larger problem of crime in South Africa instead of a specialised, mythical entity. The myths of white genocide propagated by white Afrikaaner groups pitching themselves as a minority rights group in South Africa frames white Afrikaaner farmers as victims, a victimhood that deliberately ignores or obscures black death. In other words, white groups like AfriForum's use of the narrative of white genocide is about 'entrenching white property rights and securing white economic power rather than about countering genocide' (p. 63). As Falkof points out, of course, there is no white genocide in South Africa, in fact, most white South Africans live more privileged and more secured lives than the black majority that lives in poverty and is at much higher risk of experiencing crime. [Extracted from the article]

In light of increasing artificial intelligence and proliferating conspiracy, technofetishism and moral panics, faith in ubiquitous data capture and mistrust of public institutions, the ascendance of STEM and the 'deplatforming' of the arts and humanities, this article considers doubt as an epistemological condition, a political tool, an ethical force, a rhetorical register, and an aesthetic category. Adapted from the author's May 2023 inaugural King's Public Lecture in Digital Humanities at King's College London, and structured in the form of a syllabus for a speculative class, it aims to identify where humanistic conceptions of doubt do, or could or should, reside within our digital systems: at the interface, within the code, or engineered into hardware and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue '« Islamogauchisme » ? Moral Panics, Culture Wars and the Threat to Academic Freedom'. It begins by outlining the polemic in 2020, whereby the government accused universities of being overrun by so-called 'Islamogauchistes', placing this moral panic within the wider French context of ideological redefinitions of laïcité and debates on the compatibility of Islam with the universalism of a secular republic, as well as of neoliberal reforms and authoritarian crackdowns on public protest. The article then explores the history and fallacy of the concept and associated government claims, arguing that the term is best understood as an empty signifier, an umbrella term under which almost anything vaguely Muslim or left-wing could be covered, before moving on to critique the function of this kind of discourse, arguing that as well as continuing the Islamophobic scapegoating of minorities, it serves to 'other' the left-wing opposition and normalise the far-right while the neoliberal centre itself becomes increasingly illiberal and authoritarian. Finally, the text will place this very French polemic in the wider global context, considering it in terms of the wider culture wars that we are witnessing around the world while also focusing on what is specific to the French case – namely, a particularly republican form of racism that supplements the neoilliberalisation of the state. The introduction concludes with a summary of the contributions to the issue from Philippe Marlière, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, Michel Wieviorka, Caroline Ibos & Eric Fassin, Houria Bouteldja & Anna Younes, Farid Hafez, and Aurélien Mondon & Simon Dawes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conversation with French-Algerian thinker and activist Houria Bouteldja focuses on her book Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love. By zooming in on contemporary debates around racism and decolonization in France, this interview focuses on questions of how gender and masculinity, sexuality, class, and race form political relationships within the modern nation-state. In particular, it asks follow-up questions to Bouteldja's epistemology in the chapter "We, Indigenous Women," the chapter that explicitly focuses on women, gender, and sexuality. And while gender and sexuality are always also inherently public, we follow up on tracing how her book, Les indigènes de la république (the movement of which she was the spokesperson from 2005 to 2020), and she herself have been received in French public debate, including in academia, politics and the media. Within the latter power fields, we address the role of women of color intellectuals and the challenges they pose to current debates and "moral panics" through the optics of popular decolonial movements. Eventually, a conversation unfolds where an ostensible "(too) liberal academia" has been marked by contemporary accusations of "Islamogauchisme" in a wider discourse that portrays Europe as being "in crisis" and what that means for the decolonization of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delineates the resources and strategies that three young black men use to gain status and construct and perform an often-violent street masculinity on a London (UK) housing estate. Ethnographic fieldwork occurred in 2019 during a growing moral panic about youth violence and knife crime. Referring to resources as types of capital, they are categorised under the four headings of economic, social, linguistic, cultural, and physical. Central to the research is the material body, which we view as both an agent and object of the practices through which young black men produce their masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through archival research and an intersectional thematic analysis, this paper examines three key episodes of early-2000s sensation To Catch a Predator and situates them within crime media and journalism literature. The paper analyzes themes of journalistic integrity and the subjugation of women and girls by a television program that claimed to use the former to stop the latter. Based on the analysis, To Catch a Predator engages in forensic journalism as demonstrated by the treatment of women and girls as bait, claims of ownership over women and girls' bodies, lack of nuance in reporting, and the liberties taken in their journalistic practices. Ultimately, this paper shows how To Catch a Predator acts as a spectacle of vigilantism, by creating the child pornography it claims to fight and by glorifying punishment, contributing to the ongoing moral panic around child exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a contentious issue affecting the character, boundaries and future of social order, migration represents a recurrent source of moral panic. While analysts have considered conventional outlets' role in triggering collective alarm, less is known about social media's effects on migration's construction as a social problem. Working with an original dataset of tweets from the 2019 Canadian election, a period of heightened concern and outcry for significant portions of the electorate, this paper employs content analytic methods to assess migration's online demonization and interrogate the patterns of framing, participation and engagement brought within the issue's orbit. Alongside documenting significant disquiet and antipathy, its findings suggest that Twitter is transforming panic production and facilitating forms of reaction involving mass-participation and collaboration; interference from automated 'bots' and considerable dispute, dissent and negotiation. Based on these results, the sensitizing concept of platformed panics is proposed to capture how social media's technical affordances, design and appropriation align to promote moral panics that are networked, algorithmic and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK 2016 EU Referendum has introduced a period of uncertainty for both the indigenous population and for non-British citizens. This uncertainty is considered within a framework of the recent revisions in the sociology of moral panics through an analysis of interviews with Polish migrant workers. This analysis reveals two main discursive framing logics. The first logic refers to a self-reported anti-Polish migrant moral panic discourse that – according to respondents – was exploited by British anti-migrant campaigners. The second type of articulation illustrates the good moral panic logic, namely, a panicking discourse appearing among respondents about the vulnerability of their community in post-Referendum Britain. This article, however, problematises the good moral panic logic by eliciting competing narratives found in the interview data. The latter did not aim merely at stimulating caring attitudes but referred also to moral regulation techniques to manage Brexit-oriented risks and avoid the trap of becoming a vulnerable migrant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how news constructed vulnerability in the coverage of COVID-19 and populations in prisons and jails. Focused on key moments during the moral panic around the pandemic, the analysis of publications from across the U.S. found substantial reporting earlier in 2020, and a striking absence and ignorance of key developments later into 2021. Six news discourses - journalistic objectivity, blaming and abandonment, vulnerability, compassion, vilification, and absence - were complicated by the climate of demonstrations for racial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are an estimated 50,000 LGBT teachers in English schools. In common with all workplaces, under the Equality Act 2010, schools have a responsibility to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) teachers from harassment in the workplace. From September 2020, for the first time, schools in England have been required to teach Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) that is inclusive of LGBT relationships. Representatives of faith communities and parents of school children in Birmingham and other major cities have protested outside school gates in opposition to the introduction of LGBT inclusive RSHE. This article explores what is at the heart of the moral panic about the inclusion of LGBT identities in the curriculum. As schools introduce inclusive RSHE, we must consider the impact of protests on LGBT teacher health, well-being and identity. More than half of LGBT teachers have suffered from anxiety or depression linked to their sexual identity and role as a teacher and so supportive and unequivocal support and intervention is needed to ensure schools are safe places, free from hostility, for LGBT teachers, pupils and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a robust literature on the impact of the sexualisation of the war on terror as an imperial endeavour on both queer and non-queer subjects in the Middle East. This article explores the consequences for LGBT activism of the localisation of the war on terror in the region and the securitisation of governance, taking Lebanon as its focus. I argue the importance of thinking through the ways in which the war on terror is localised, taken advantage of and used as a means of strengthening state power in the Global South, and the effects of such processes on activism. I explore how LGBT activists in Lebanon have engaged the war on terror as an instrument of local rather than foreign power. The weaponisation of the war on terror as an instrument of governance by the Lebanese state, I argue, has reshaped the field within which LGBT activists in the country articulate and lobby for their rights and has enabled a turn towards what I call proto-homonationalism amongst some LGBT actors in Lebanon – attempts at positioning certain segments of the LGBT population as not only of the nation but beneficial to the security state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Ultra-realism' has become an influential current in criminology, especially in the study of violence and explanations of trends in violent crime. Ultra-realist writers frequently make use of Norbert Elias's theory of civilizing processes, while also often expressing reservations about his ideas. In this article, we argue that ultra-realists tend to make only partial and inaccurate use of Elias's very extensive writings. Although he himself did not write very much about crime – and indeed was less concerned with violence per se than with the roots of aggressive impulses and their control – we place him in the context of the post-war sociology of deviance. We argue in particular that it is far from true that he was blind to political economy, since the state-formation processes are central to his theory. We relate our argument to double-bind processes, violent subcultures, moral panics, populism and recent political developments in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the BBC film NW as a locus for the emergence of a conditional aesthetic of black 'convention'. I focus on its articulations about black identities to argue that such strategies are symptomatic of a hybridising of neoliberalism and themes of black consciousness in the UK screen industries. The black neoliberal aesthetic describes the mediated outcomes of the commodification of black images and popular narratives for the purpose of both black social engagement and public voyeurism. In identifying the co-opting of ideas of black cultural value by neoliberal hegemony, and accentuating the co-dependency between these in the narrating of the black British experience, I suggest that an influential dynamic constructing a particularly effective justification for black British film allows for a theorisation of the relationship between neoliberalism and mainstream representations of blackness, and how excessive articulations about black moral panic and casualty in NW map onto present-day social concerns over racial representation and cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mass murder is traditionally examined as a separate construct from homicide generally, few studies have explored their similarities and differences. This study compares the incident, victim, and offender characteristics of: (1) mass murderers and homicide offenders; and (2) mass murder-suicide offenders and homicide-suicide perpetrators. Mass murderers are more likely to be male; commit suicide; kill young, white, and female victims; use firearms; co-offend; operate in public places; and kill as part of drug trafficking and/or gang warfare. The analysis demonstrates that mass murderers are distinct from both homicide and homicide-suicide perpetrators, and represent a unique type of violent offender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By utilizing manipulative tactics, such as persuasion techniques and strategies through social media sites, moral entrepreneurs can maintain and/or increase their scope of influence. In this article, we propose another tactic utilized by moral entrepreneurs, a concept we refer to as shifting morals. The complexity of moral entrepreneurs' life experiences provides them with an endless set of social and moral norms that they can use to tweak their own ideals to encompass other moral framing networks to gain more followers and thus increase their influence. We examine theoretical literature, while also providing examples that resulted from content analysis from media websites to illustrate our proposed concept of shifting morals. We conclude that the shifting morals tactic is another tool moral entrepreneurs use to increase their influence in society to enact social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Bourdieusian field theory to examine how journalistic practices contributed to a multi-mediated moral panic about 'African gangs' in Melbourne, Australia. Empirical insight is supplied via interviews with journalists who identified traditional media outlets as 'secondary definers' that amplified and legitimised this racialised threat construction. Participants attributed the intense and sensationalised media coverage to the political climate, the newsworthiness of racialised 'folk devils', and the economic and technological transformation of the journalistic field. These transformations were perceived to have negatively influenced journalistic standards by incentivising the efficient production of commodifiable content. Participants described how these structural changes were filtered through the social personalities of different news outlets; they shaped, and were reproduced through, distinct managerial cultures, editorial routines and journalistic habitus. The emergent nomos ('rules of the game') was perceived to constrain the autonomy of journalists, particularly those lacking cultural capital, and limit opportunities for contestation of the 'African gangs' narrative. Journalists seemingly adapted by engaging in practices which reflected their attempts to negotiate these conditions and establish coherent narrative identities. In some cases, this entailed the neutralisation of what journalists recognised as ethically questionably reporting practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that organised transphobia is promoted using similar strategies and politics as the wider reactionary movement which has become increasingly mainstream. In particular, we outline the transphobic process of ‘othering’ based on moral panics, which seeks to construct, homogenise and exaggerate a threat and to naturalise it in the bodies and existence of the ‘Other’. Reactionary politics rely on authoritarian tendencies and strategies which aim to remove the rights of certain communities, and as such threaten wider demands for equal rights. They claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’, in this case often (certain) women, against an elite which seeks to grant unfair rights and privileges to a mostly silent and silenced minority, even though said rights are precarious and limited, and power is rarely on their side. Rather than a bottom-up movement in defence of women, what we refer to as ‘organised transphobia’ is a top-down movement that relies on prominent platforms and privileged access to shaping public discourse to divert attention away from the real struggle most women and LGBTQ+ people are facing conjointly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the book, as Schuilenburg (2021: 6) states is not to "search for the secret of hysteria", rather to understand "why it continues to operate in our society", a purpose which he fulfils in a thought-provoking, interesting and even humorous way. Whilst Schuilenburg insightfully shows how hysteria differs to panic (as used by Cohen), a deeper engagement with the extensive sociological literature on emotions could have been an interesting aspect for inclusion. Second - and this is the main focus of the book - hysteria can be used as an analytical tool for gauging contemporary society, as Schuilenburg shows with his careful and in-depth sociological analysis. [Extracted from the article]

The article is based on a critical case study of the BBC's investigative documentary titled Stadiums of Hate and the public's response to it. The documentary was broadcasted 11 days before the kickoff of Euro 2012 (UEFA [Union of European Football Associations] European Championships in Football), the first sport mega event hosted in Poland and Ukraine. The main theme was football-related racism and violence allegedly threatening the safety of the fans coming to the tournament. The article follows Amanda Rohloff's proposal combining the Eliasian conceptual framework of civilizing processes with the moral panics approach to describe the effort to amplify the spiral of public outcry toward the hosts of Euro 2012 in an attempt to modernize and civilize the Eastern European world of football. The moral panics spiral was brought to an end by the tournament which did not justify grim predictions. The article combines analysis of media content and the public statements with interviews conducted with some of the informants of the BBC journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates Chinese urban youth's mediated 'slice of life' and playful encounters as part of their identity construction and performance work on Bilibili, one of China's most influential video-sharing social media sites mediating anime, comics, games and novels. Using a mix-method approach of digital ethnography, participant observation, interviews and data visualisation, this article examines fans' hermeneutic practices through anime, comic, game and novel prosumption, exemplified by danmaku : 'bullet screen', barrage-like comments overlaid on videos. This article argues that Bilibili works as an 'identity college' for fans to perform various roles and explore their hybrid identities in a social-hermeneutic engagement process. In particular, the function of anonymous danmaku comments will be closely analysed as it offers a quasi-real-time engagement experience for fans and helps shape fans' social self. Following a symbolic interactionist tradition, Mead's 'generalised other' and Goffman's dramaturgical theory are contextualised in the Chinese socio-cultural milieu where fans' identity performance is regarded as masquerade. Departing from the moral panic rhetoric that Generation Z is 'amused to death', becoming 'infantile and animalised', or even enslaved by their desires and capable only of 'cold intimacies', the findings of this explorative study present a more complex understanding of Chinese youth's identity work through participatory social media use and networked fandom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been numerous discourses around millennials and some of them may sound worrisome. To discuss millennials and moral panic, this study looks at three different areas (i.e., criminal justice, teaching at higher education institutions, and transitions to adulthood in South Korea) with some issues pertinent to millennials and younger generations faced in society currently. Drawing on a wide range of the literature, this study attempts to recognize unique characteristics of our younger generations, to find ways to better understand them using multiple angles, and to identify reasons why we should stay hopeful about the future. Our society will continue to change, often in unpredictable ways, and there will always be a new generation on the horizon. Efforts should be made to work with younger generations, learning from each other and finding ways to work together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the persecution of Muslims in India that is currently taking place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic as an illustrative case, this essay identifies the dynamics of the organization of ideological discourse by populist leaders in times of unexpected crisis. The organization of ideological discourse represents strategic, discursive acts committed by populist leaders aimed at foregrounding social conditions that would function in the advancement of various political ends—whether those ends may be the consolidation of power, the undermining of institutional systems of checks and balances, the implementation of exclusionary or injurious policies against disenfranchised constituents, the suspension of civil liberties, or a combination thereof. It is engendered through a three-stage process. In the first stage, surface-level validation by legitimate institutional actors confirms preconceived ideas about a constructed enemy. In the second stage, inflammatory rhetoric is deployed by populist leaders, which scapegoat that constructed enemy. These two stages culminate to create widespread moral panic in society. With moral panic firmly established, in the third stage an environment of fear and paranoia becomes susceptible to the enactment of symbolic and physical violence against the constructed enemy. The essay concludes with some words on the pressing need to deconstruct ideologically motivated discourses related to COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of austerity and neoliberal policies has disrupted everyday life for a significant number of Europeans, especially among young people. Rising tuition fees, labor market reforms, levels of unemployment, precarious working conditions, and discontent toward the political status quo have contributed to increase moral panics and outrage, which have often triggered mass protests. This article analyses whether and to what extent young Europeans express their demands via protest claims across nine European countries (N = 4,525). We argue that examining political (institutional and discursive) opportunities and claims' attributes (such as actors, issues, targets) is important to understand whether a youth-related claim takes a protest form or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes youth collective activism in relation to crime and violence in the context of long-term dominance of "moral panics" discourse, where young people are often framed as a "threat" and "problem." While many prior studies focus on media presentation of youth in single countries, we investigate how youth actors themselves make political claims related to crime and violence, and take a comparative perspective on this question. Based on a unique data on youth-related political claims from the newspapers of nine European countries—France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, we demonstrate that youth are rarely present in the public discussions about crime and violence, especially in the countries where youth actors face restricted discursive opportunities in the print media. The dominant "adult view" in claims about crime and violence often connect youth to diverse social problems and attribute blame to youth more often than to adults; the claims made by youth do not make such a difference in blame attribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educator sexual misconduct is a problem that has gained increased attention because of the high-profile cases reported by the news media. Yet, the diversity in state law regarding this offense remains somewhat unexplored. In this article, we compare and evaluate state statutory provisions regarding educator sexual misconduct; our focus is on what constitutes educator sexual misconduct, and what penalties are provided for offenders. As such, we explore the differences and similarities in statutory provisions across states in terms of the definition of child sexual assault, the age of consent, the penalties for various types of sexual misconduct perpetrated by teachers, and any requirement for registration as sex offenders. Our findings indicate that though the number of applicable statutes has almost doubled since 2010, there remains a wide variety in the definition and penalties included in those laws, and 21 states have not chosen to enact a specific law at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking asylum is a highly polarising topic, exacerbated by news discourses that construct asylum seekers as threats to the nation. National and international news coverage has been said to incite 'moral panics' via the use of sensationalised depictions of asylum seekers, however, few studies have examined audience responses. This article discusses the findings of research utilising Critical Discourse Analysis alongside an Audience Reception framework to examine how 24 Western Australians perceive news coverage of asylum seekers. All participants critiqued news constructions of the issue, with many emphasising sensationalism and the incitement of fear as central concerns affecting their trust and engagement with Australian coverage. Analysed with consideration of the 'moral panic' and 'media panic' literature, these findings demonstrate that sensationalist depictions of asylum seekers are being resisted by audiences. This inclination towards 'media panics' over 'moral panics' is discussed in terms of its implications for democracy and audience reception scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the metaphors used in the British press to characterize the payday loan industry in order to develop our understanding of organizational delegitimation. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and theories of moral panic, we show how the metaphors used in the press framed the industry as a 'moral problem'. The study identified four root metaphors that were used to undertake moral problematization: predators and parasites, orientation, warfare and pathology. We show how these metaphors played a key role in the construction of a moral panic through two framing functions: first by constructing images of the damage and danger caused by the firms and second by attributing agency in such a way that moral responsibility was assigned to the organizations. We also extend the discussion of our findings to explore the ideological dimensions of the moral panic. We develop a critical analysis that points to the potential scapegoating role of the discourse, which served as a convenient moral crusade for the government and other neo-liberal supporters to pursue, while detracting attention away from the underlying socio-economic context, including austerity policies, the decline in real wages and the deregulation of the finance sector. From this critical perspective, payday loan companies can be seen as a 'folk devil' through which society's fears about finance capitalism are articulated, creating disproportionate exaggeration and alarm, while the system as a whole can remain intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral panics are conventionally explained as socially regressive overreactions to objectively minor problems. In the early 2000s, moral panics were recast as collective grievances that arise from perceived crises in the moral regulation of everyday life. Emphasizing neoliberal forms of entrepreneurial risk management, the panic-as-regulation perspective provides ways of thinking beyond some of the limitations associated with conventional perspectives. This article shows how the new neoliberal compromise, characterized by ongoing submission to the rule of capital in the absence of familiar ways of securing hegemonic consensus, is calling attention to the importance of theorizing the conjunctural norms of personal responsibility that underscore the panic-as-regulation perspective. By locating market-oriented subjectivities in the wider trajectory of neoliberalism, we achieve two things: first, a clearer understanding of the normative phase of neoliberal rule in whose image the panic-as-regulation perspective is crafted; second, a stronger position to develop insights into post-hegemonic claims-making activities that are appearing across the political and cultural spectrums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a corpus-driven computer-assisted analysis of newspaper language immediately surrounding 'im/migrant(s)' in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun and their Sunday publications between 2011 and 23 June 2016. Drawing on moral panic and social representations theories, the study reveals that the newspapers increasingly 'othered' the European Union (EU) through constructing moral panics over 'illegal'/'EU' 'im/migrant(s)' prior to the referendum, despite noticeable differences across them. It confirms that the EU was imagined as the origin and conduit of migrants entering the UK, especially by the two right-wing newspapers, constructing an antagonism between Britain and the EU, with implications for understanding the role of news media in shaping and signifying public discourses about Brexit. The conventional stigmatising norms labelling 'immigrants' have been adopted and extended to associate the object of the EU with the moral panics over 'immigrants', which reflects the changes in social representations of 'immigrants' and 'the EU'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers interested in registered sex offenders (RSOs) and sex offender registration and community notification laws (SORN) legislation have noted that there is a perpetual moral panic associated with the topic. Community members frequently call for increased crime control policies to monitor RSOs, despite the research suggesting these laws do not effectively reduce recidivism levels for this offender group. The current study seeks to predict participant support for punitive change to the registry and SORN legislation, based on the idea that a perpetual moral panic continuously exists concerning RSOs. Using a stepwise ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analytical approach, the findings suggest that the theoretical elements of a moral panic are strongly predictive of punitive support and mediate other predictor variables normally associated with punitive attitudes toward sex offenders and the sex offender registry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Gender ideology' discourse has been one of the most recurrent strategies of neo-conservative activism at a global level. Through this syntagma, a variety of moral panics have been mobilized against feminist agendas and LGBTI rights, accusing them of promoting the destruction of natural order, the spread of Marxism and global conspiracy. The academic literature has highlighted that the genesis of this strategic discourse was an intellectual production in the mid-1990s; we can trace back texts written in conjunction by secular neo-conservative intellectuals in the United States and members of the Catholic hierarchy. However, the tendency has been to ignore the strong intellectual production that neo-conservative activists developed at that time in Argentina, particularly in Córdoba and Buenos Aires, which helped to lay the foundations of the present 'gender ideology' discourse. The intention of this work is to draw attention to that local production and its connection with the ideas that were being developed in parallel in the global North. In order to do this, the article analyzes a series of texts produced by neo-conservatives in Argentina in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening the connection between people and places they share, I was primarily concerned with how we shaped urban space to (re)make public spaces. This place making was about collectively (re)inventing public spaces based on the interactions that take place within them making connections to individuals and beginning conversations of the complexities of finding place. Therefore, the use of public space should indicate its designation as a third place and not sanctioned rules that control the use of public space. As urban spaces are made into public places through the interaction of community members, I look at how that space is used with a focus on designations of public places/spaces with two goals in mind: (a) The third-place designation can apply to public parks and the interactions that take place within them. (b) Banning activities in public places due to "moral panic" changes the community use of that space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationwide moral panic has long served as a primary explanation for sex offense laws. These laws, however, remain primarily left to state legislatures, which implies potential variation in their content over time. Variation in legislative content, to the degree that it represents implementation, not only suggests differential consequences for registrants and communities, but also it would raise questions to the sufficiency of moral panic as a sole explanation for sex offense policy change. I build upon earlier work by exploring variation in the content and timing of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) reform in all 50 states over time. After documenting variation in these laws, I present the ways in which SORN legislative content has evolved differently across states. In addition, the timing of legislative reforms differed not only across states but also within states over time. These findings have implications for existing theoretical assertions regarding criminal justice policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crystal methamphetamine ("ice") has been a fixture in Australian newspapers since the early 2000s. This study explores discourses at work in constructing the ice "problem" in recent Australian media, possible implications for how people who use ice are discursively positioned, and the resulting significance for drug policy. Twenty-seven articles were selected for discourse analysis, sampled from a larger study of Australian ice-related news items. By critically engaging with sociological concepts of "moral panic" and the "risk society," we demonstrate how three media discourses produce the subject of the "young person" as both victimized by ice and a catastrophic threat in and of themselves: (1) "ice traps and transforms youth," (2) "ice does not discriminate," and (3) "ice perverts sanctuary." These discourses illustrate the tensions between the meanings of ice use and understandings of safety and risk, speaking to current anxieties in Western, neoliberal societies. Ice use is further constructed as a form of abjection, threatening traditional social boundaries and institutions. However, the agency and determinism simultaneously granted to ice the substance troubles the notion we are witnessing yet another "drug scare" that polices social behavior. Instead, we observe how these discourses mirror those in the biomedical literature, which construct ice as a uniform, agentic, and uniquely dangerous drug. With use attributed to entrapment and/or naturalized as addiction, the drug is constituted as engineering its own, always harmful, consumption. This limits conceptions of any "safer," "rational," or "pleasurable" forms of ice use and further justifies state intervention on its users. Overall, these discourses rationalize prohibitionist interventions around ice and singularize drug consumption as a behavior requiring institutional management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We examine how news media portrays the causes of mass shootings for shooters of different races. Specifically, we explore whether White men are disproportionately framed as mentally ill, and what narratives media tend to invoke when covering mass shootings through the lens of mental illness as opposed to other explanatory frames. Methods: The study examines a unique data set of 433 news documents covering 219 mass shootings between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015. It analyzes the data using a mixed methods approach, combining logistic regression with content analysis. Results: Quantitative findings show that Whites and Latinos are more likely to have their crime attributed to mental illness than Blacks. Qualitative findings show that rhetoric within these discussions frame White men as sympathetic characters, while Black and Latino men are treated as perpetually violent threats to the public. Conclusions: Results suggest that there is racial variability in how the media assign blame to mass shooters. While Black men and Latinos are cast as violently inclined, White men are treated as victims or sympathetic characters. Results also indicate that there are noteworthy differences in how blame is assigned to Black men and Latinos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article breaks the silence on the politically progressive characteristics of a moral panic. In contrast to the tacit scholarly consensus that moral panics entail regressively conservative social reactions to putative harms, moral panics are alternatively conceptualized as normatively ambivalent operations of power. The article builds on continuing efforts to conceptualize moral panic as a form of moral regulation by explaining how moral panics are capable of perpetuating as well as disrupting and potentially even reversing the norms of intelligibility that buttress hegemonic understandings of, and moral responsiveness to, violence, injustice, suffering, and harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a sequence of "moral panics" regarding accessibility of information on the internet and its exercise for criminal/harmful activity. Such problems and wider availability of internet raises the public policy concerns among governments over whether the internet should be regulated or not. Some believe it should not, considering that internet regulation will discourage what really internet is purported to encourage i.e. 'free flow of information'. They see internet regulation as a potential threat to the 'freedom of expression', which is possibly one of the most prominent aspects that are instrumental in the growth and popularity of this technology. On the other hand, the others who are against the free access of internet underscores the danger of problematic content and illegal activities on the internet. They claim that much of these activities and content are illegal in most jurisdictions. Adding to this, unrestricted right to freedom of speech and expression may possibly threaten other's rights. Thus many government organizations and internet users call for the regulation of internet. In this backdrop, paper revisits relevant literature and attempt to respond to the contentious problem of internet regulation. In this process, the paper also examines the experiences from several countries grappling with the problem of internet regulation. It concludes that any regulation on the internet has to be multi-faceted, culturally sensitive, and globally coordinated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Excited Delirium, a controversial medical explanation offered as an explanation for a variety of in-custody deaths. It appears to fit all essential criteria to incite a moral panic, featuring a powerful moral entrepreneur playing off of well-established fears of drugs use and psychosis, with a classic folk devil in the form of young men of color. Yet Excited Delirium has failed to provoke a widespread response, raising the question of how a phenomenon that meets all the classic criteria can fail to incite a moral panic. I argue this stems from the entrepreneurs involved failing to present themselves as sufficiently moral, their campaign to medicalize the phenomenon meeting an unreceptive medical field, and their broad conception of Excited Delirium too easily facilitating strong counter-narratives. This study uses Excited Delirium as a negative case to demonstrate several important factors to consider in the development of moral panics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the concept of moral panic to avoid approaching its expiration date, it is essential to include novel approaches and perspectives. This article aims to augment the under-developed theoretical grounding of the sociology of moral panic by expanding on Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. It begins by offering a critical appraisal of recent developments in moral panic studies and explains how Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and hysteresis might help overcome the inherent weaknesses of moral panic research. This novel approach is put into empirical work to exploring the rise of a moral panic about the dangers humanitarian aid workers face in the post-Cold War era. It shows that, while today’s threats do not radically differ from those of the past, the widespread sense of concern and anxiety about humanitarian insecurity is a response to effects of hysteresis inside the field of humanitarian aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents dissertation abstracts on the topic of the history of psychiatry, including neuro-rehabilitation, moral panics, and the book "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" ("DSM").

The Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) offers treatment to sex offenders civilly confined after they complete their prison sentences. In this article, we enhance the notion of kairos in rhetorical situations with the perceptions of risk and the sociological concept of moral panic by tracing three kairotic moments involving MSOP: the 1992 Dennis Linehan civil commitment case; the 2003 murder of college student Dru Sjodin; and the 2012 provisional discharge of Clarence Opheim. We examine the political, public, and media response to these events and provide the results of 21 interviews with stakeholders. In doing so, we hope to illustrate how moral panic and risk perception can so influence what seems the right choice at the right time that stakeholders may get caught in what we call kairotic cycles, where solutions to a problem are stymied by competing perceptions and by entrenched positions that reoccur over time and without resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beckett and Sasson argue that the wars on crime and drugs of the 1980s and 1990s were part of an elite-engineered hegemonic strategy aimed at replacing the welfare state with the security state. As the welfare state came under attack, a new hegemonic strategy emerged that attacked welfare policies and promoted “tough on crime” policies. Yet, Beckett and Sasson note that for the new hegemonic strategy to be successful, it must be rooted in the experiences and cultural beliefs of the general population. We investigate the possibility of an elite-engineered effort to build support for tough on crime policies by conducting a time series analysis using General Social Survey data and statements by presidents in State of the Union addresses from 1972 to 2010. Specifically, we predict aggregate levels of fear of crime and support for welfare spending with presidential mentions of “crime” and “welfare” in State of the Union addresses. Our results indicate that fear increases when presidents discuss crime and welfare in the State of the Union. In addition, fear of crime is inversely related to supporting welfare spending. These relationships hold even after controlling for crime rates. Our findings offer support for Beckett and Sasson’s argument. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]