Moral Panic

“Virtual panic: children online and the transmission of harm” in Moral Panics over Contemporary Children and Youth. Ed. Charles Krinsky. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 31-46.

by Robert Payne

Wolf, Sonja. “Creating Folk Devils: Street Gang Representations in El Salvador’s Print Media.”

by Sonja Wolf

Journal of Human Security 8.2 (forthcoming 2012).

Corporate power and the market: Automotive performance and the automobile industry

by Alan Listiak

Frederick, B. J. & Fradella, H. F. (In press). Leopold and Loeb. SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America (pp.___-___). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

by Brian Jay Frederick

Co-authored with Dr Henry F. Fradella, J.D.

Encyclopedia entry for the "SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America." Article discusses... more Encyclopedia entry for the "SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America." Article discusses Leopold & Loeb, convicted of the murder of a young boy in a wealthy neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.

Moral Panics and their Consequences in Post-Handover Hong Kong: A Study of the Contestations over Sovereignty, Patriotism, and National Identity

by Daniel Garrett

Short PhD abstract (longer available on request)

The Branch Davidians and the Federal Government: Ruminations on a Tragedy (1993; originally published in the Deseret Free Press)

by Ronald Helfrich, Jnr.

The New Sexual Visibility

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; invited by Feminist Theory

A diversifying range of markers of sexuality and desire are today ‘proposed, suggested, imposed’ for subjects,... more A diversifying range of markers of sexuality and desire are today ‘proposed, suggested, imposed’ for subjects, producing a condition I call ‘the new sexual visibility’. These signifiers are capable of simultaneously heteronormative and counter-heteronormative meanings and mobilisation, in response to the directly conflicting demands on young women in contemporary society. In policy and media discourses on ‘sexualisation’, these cultural changes are articulated with a moral and medical problematisation of the credibility of young women as adequate commercial and sexual choice-makers. Drawing upon Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim (2000) it will be argued that, in this way, the figure of ‘the girl’ is haunted by the ‘trouble’ young women suffer, and are held responsible for, in negotiating what is thereby situated as acceptable forms of subjectivity. A Butlerian alternative to moral panic theory, for use in considering cases like ‘sexualisation’ where the object of concern cannot be meaningfully quantified, will be set out in the conclusion to the article.

The idea of moral panic – ten dimensions of dispute

by Amanda Rohloff

Co-authored with Matthew David, Julian Petley, and Jason Hughes. Published in 'Crime, Media, Culture', 2011, Volume 7 Number 3, pp.215-228

This paper explores the open and contested concept of moral panic over its 40-year history, exploring the... more 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.

Foreword: Moral panics in the contemporary world

by Amanda Rohloff

Co-authored with Jason Hughes, Matthew David and Julian Petley. Published in 'Crime, Media, Culture', 2011, Volume 7 Number 3, pp.211-214

Special Issue: Moral panics in the contemporary world

by Amanda Rohloff

Co-edited with Jason Hughes, Julian Petley and Matthew David. Published in 'Crime, Media, Culture', 2011, Volume 7 Number 3

Extending the Concept of Moral Panic: Elias, Climate Change and Civilization

by Amanda Rohloff

published in 'Sociology', 2011, Volume 45 Number 4, pp.634–649

Combining the theories and concepts of Norbert Elias with the empirical example of climate change, this article aims... more Combining the theories and concepts of Norbert Elias with the empirical example of climate change, this article aims to extend and develop the concept of moral panic. The focus of the analysis is on the documentary An Inconvenient Truth – an exemplar of a more general trend in popular culture regarding the moralization and individual regulation of climate change. In the final sections of the article, Al Gore’s short-term campaign is related to more long-term social processes.

Sa‘ida Sultan/Danna International Transgender Pop and the Polysemiotics of Sex, Nation, and Ethnicity on the Israeli-Egyptian Border

by Ted Swedenburg

In Walter Armbrust, editor. Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000

Projecto de Investigação para «ENTRE CORPOS E ECRÃS – IDENTIDADES E SEXUALIDADES DOS JOVENS NOS NOVOS MEDIA»

by Daniel Cardoso

Projecto de Doutoramento em Ciências da Comunicação arguido com nota de 17 valores.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: juventude, internet, sexualidade, pornografia, sexting, teoria queer



Este... more PALAVRAS-CHAVE: juventude, internet, sexualidade, pornografia, sexting, teoria queer



Este Trabalho Final de Curso tem como objectivo a apresentação de um projecto de investigação para a realização de uma Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Comunicação.

Irei partir de um trabalho de recolha e recensão bibliográfica crítica que permita determinar quais as mais recentes tendências e dados nas várias áreas dos usos sexualizados das novas tecnologias por parte dos jovens e crianças. Por outro lado, um outro objectivo, paralelo, é o de identificar as lacunas existentes na pesquisa actual, e procurar entender de que forma a investigação para esta Tese de Doutoramento poderá contribuir para sanar essa lacuna. Este olhar crítico terá como bases uma visão pós-estruturalista e dos estudos culturais, de abordagem queer, olhando para os mais recentes avanços na concepção e construção de identidades como a juventude ou a sexualidade.

A segunda parte deste Trabalho Final compreenderá a descrição das problemáticas colocadas especificamente pela Tese de Doutoramento pretendida, bem como uma descrição de quais os processos metodológicos que se pretende levar a cabo, de forma a conseguir oferecer resposta às questões levantadas; a acompanhar esta descrição estará um cronograma dos vários passos da investigação.

Neste caso em particular, alguns dos campos a serem revistos bibliograficamente são: a concepção sociológica e filosófica de identidade, sexualidade e orientação sexual, juventude, sujeito e sexo; os significados e debates em torno da pornografia; a noção de autonomia e literacia para os jovens, dentro e fora do contexto da cibercultura; os vários papéis que os jovens podem adoptar enquanto utilizadores, participantes e produtores de conteúdos; a retórica representacional e mediática do pânico moral; o papel específico das crianças e jovens dentro do dispositivo de sexualidade foucauldiano; o desenrolar da constituição de uma cidadania da intimidade e sexual nos jovens; a educação sexual na medida em que congrega questões de mediação escolar, parental e sócio-cultural, para além dos novos media.

As metodologias empregues pretendem, não o estabelecimento de uma amostragem e resultados representativos, mas antes uma mistura entre uma componente quantitativa e uma componente qualitativa, recorrendo inclusivamente aos dados do Projecto EU Kids Online para estabelecer pontes de ligação com um estudo representativo. Esta segunda será a mais preponderante no contexto – o objectivo aqui é o de delinear uma pesquisa longitudinal, que esteja capacitada para abarcar conceptualmente o processo, precisamente por causa da importância do processo e da necessidade de encontrar a reflexividade dentro da investigação e através dela. A análise crítica do discurso, análise de conteúdo – com cruzamentos entre teoria foucauldiana, teorias feministas, grounded theory, análise narrativa – e um constante trabalho de reflexão com os participantes da investigação serão ferramentas indispensáveis para tratar o material obtido através das várias rondas de entrevistas planeadas.

Por fim, tomando a abordagem da investigação académica como uma prática politicamente engajada e apreciando o lugar de privilégio que a academia é e constitui, haverá uma preocupação fundamental com a procura de pontes entre os resultados obtidos e a sua divulgação junto de stakeholders e responsáveis por políticas públicas.

Broadcast Yourself: Moral Panic, Youth Culture and Internet Studies

by Catherine Driscoll

Driscoll, C. and M. Gregg (2008) "Broadcast Yourself: Youth, Community and Intimacy Online". In Usha Rodriguez and Belinda Smaill (eds), Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region. Cambridge Scholars Press.

What Did the British Temperance Movement Accomplish? Attitudes to Alcohol, the Law and Moral Regulation

by Henry Yeomans

Sociology, Vol.45 (1), pp.38-53.

Academics studying the British temperance movement tend to regard it as having had little effect. This article... more Academics studying the British temperance movement tend to regard it as having had little effect. This article reframes the question of impact by drawing on the separation, inherent in moral regulation theory, of the law’s simple legal functions from its broader moral functions. This concentration on the discursive and persuasive faculties of the law allows an investigation of the subtler effects of different parts of the social movement. The methodology entails a longitudinal
examination of developments in statutory law as well as an analysis of public discourse on alcohol in the Victorian and contemporary eras. The article concludes that particular strands of the British temperance movement had a significant, lasting impact on the legal, heuristic and moral
frameworks which continue to surround drink.

Revisiting a Moral Panic: Ascetic Protestantism, Attitudes to Alcohol and the Implementation of the Licensing Act 2003

by Henry Yeomans

Sociological Research Online (2009), Vol.14 (2/3).

This paper examines the popular reaction to the implementation of licensing reforms in England and Wales in 2005. It... more This paper examines the popular reaction to the implementation of licensing reforms in England and Wales in 2005. It characterises these events as an episode of moral panic and seeks an ideological explanation for this alarmist response. Utilising historical perspectives, the paper draws particular attention to the formative importance of the Nineteenth Century in terms of constructing contemporary public attitudes towards alcohol. This paper draws on existing sociology and social history to highlight an international and chronological pattern which suggests a connection between Victorian temperance movements and ascetic brands of Protestantism. Through a consideration of Max Weber, E.P. Thompson and a variety of primary sources, an interpretive explanation for this pattern is provided. Legal evidence, showing the growth of alcohol regulation and the partial enforcement of temperance codes of behaviour, is then used to illustrate the survival and secularisation of temperance views from the Nineteenth Century onwards. An interpretive analysis of public discourse surrounding licensing reform in 2005 provides empirical support for this argument. Attitudes to alcohol exhibited during this episode were found to bear qualitative similarities to Calvinist-inspired temperance beliefs. The paper argues that ascetic Protestant attitudes to alcohol have achieved a wide currency and now occupy a hegemonic position within secular British society. The public reaction to the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003 is thus reinterpreted as a moral panic largely constructed by ascetic Protestant beliefs.


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Children, pornography and sex

by Jeff Klooger

Hyvien perheiden pojat murhasivat kylmästi-– Miksi? Syylliset ja syyttömät Heinojen surmaa seuranneen moraalisen myrskyn pyörteissä kolmessa sanomalehdessa

by Tanja Aitamurto

Thesis for Master for Social Sciences and Master for Arts in the University of Jyvaskyla

“What Can a Hippie Contribute to our Community?”: Culture Wars, Moral Panics, and the Woodstock Festival, New York History, Vol. 91, No. 3, Summer 2010, pages 221-243 (quote NY HIstory version).

by Ronald Helfrich, Jnr.

The representation of immigrants in the Italian press

by Charlotte Taylor

Working paper, published in CIRCaP Occasional Papers no. 21, 2009.
Free to download from the CIRCaP website (link below).

This paper uses corpus-assisted discourse studies to explore the representation of foreign migrants in the Italian... more This paper uses corpus-assisted discourse studies to explore the representation of foreign migrants in the Italian press. Presenting a para-replication of extensive research on the representation of migrants in the British press, the importance of identifying accurate translation equivalents in crosslinguistic studies is briefly discussed, and the constructions of immigrati, clandestini,extracomunitari and stranieri are analysed from a linguistic, discursive perspective. Subsequently, the different nationalities which collocate with these terms are briefly examined, and in particular the lexical items cinese/cinesi are studied in greater detail, with reference to moral panic stories.