The term ‘moral panic’ is actually one of the contributions of sociology to the wider world – it originated with Stanley Cohen’s 1972 monograph Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers, which if you ever get a chance, is actually quite a fascinating read. Cohen drew on the resources of anthropology and semiotics in conceiving a concept which would explain the mediated construction of a particular type of deviant – and as the title of the book suggests, its initial reference was to subcultures, particularly youth and music related ones. Probably because Cohen emphasised the role of the media in moral panics, the concept entered the realm of media and communication studies, where, unsurprisingly, the focus was on the role of the media.
But in terms of the mapping of a particular phenomenon, the sociological literature casts a broader net. In particular, Howard Becker’s labelling theory, originally an inductive product of his studies in the 50s and 60s of then deviant subcultures such as Black jazz musos, was articulated to the broader concept, and transposed from the micro to the macrosociological. Becker emphasised the role of “social entrepreneurs” in labelling a particular behaviour deviant, otiose, dangerous, or whatever. The precondition for the emergence of moral panics is the decline of authoritatively articulated values and norms that had been characteristic of premodern and pre-industrial cultures. One of the reasons certain Victorians started panicking, and the popular press started reflecting and fanning the flames, was the feeling that with urbanisation and secularisation gathering pace, social disorder was an ever present threat.
In an age where norms are subject to dispute between “warring gods” as Weber put it, and where a liberal state declines to adjudicate, Becker thought of various interest groups as having a stake in the definition of deviance – including professions such as psychology and so on, and also religious and political actors. Experts of one sort or another, sometimes self-proclaimed, are always there to talk up the phenonemon in question. Becker conceived of this as something like a contest over status and privilege, but there’s now a distinct astroturf aspect to it as well. The postmodern twist, if you like, to the “social entrepreneur” of the deviant label is when that entrepreneur is one literally as well as metaphorically – someone who stands to gain financially from either the invention or stigmatisation of particular behaviours and practices.
There’s a great example of this at work in the push for the “disorder” of “net addiction” to be included in the DSM, the manual of psychiatric and behavioural disorders used as a key reference work by the medical, health and insurance professions – which has a sort of quasi-canonical status. An Oregon psychiatrist, Jerald Block, wrote an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry advocating the inclusion of “net addiction”. Unsurprisingly, it got wide media attention. Xeni Jardin quotes Cory Silverberg in a post at Boing Boing:
He cites a few studies to support his theory but seems to believe that we’re already past the point of debating if such a thing as “Internet addiction” exists. Not to put too fine a point on it, we aren’t. Media responses to the editorial were predictable. Newspapers reported on it as if it were a new piece of empirical research, boldly claiming that spending too much time texting or being online was a mental disorder. Bloggers tried their best to mask their understandable anxiety behind defensive jokes about the possibility of being the first to get labeled.
I was particularly surprised by what seemed like a significant omission in the commentary. Of the 103 articles in Nexis and 92 articles linked from Google News that refer to Dr. Block’s editorial not one of them reported the fact that Dr. Block is the co-founder and president of SMARTguard, a company which owns a patent on technology that can be used to restrict computer access. It’s funny that no one mentioned it, since it’s right there in the editorial footnote.
This isn’t just sloppy journalism. The media already have a stake in this particular moral panic – because it sells papers. Quotes and citations from “experts” help establish the reality of the phenomenon, supported – as Cohen suggests – by individual examplars or parables which are already framed within the code of the evil thing to be cast out, and may or may not actually be true. Often reductive at any rate.
You can get a sense of this as well from the proliferation of the “OMG! Blogs, Social Networking, Whatevs lead to Suicide!” stories that, for some reason or another, The Age seems to specialise in (even as it does its bottom-feeder act with the search optimisation web strategy designed to suck in as many googlers for celeb trash news as possible to the Fairfax website). Tama Leaver has a provocative post examining the campaign The Age’s writers are waging about the manifold evils of Web 2.0. Maybe they’re motivated by the public interest? I certainly hope they haven’t patented their own Net Nanny tech. More likely, they’ve just figured out that the sort of bourgeois audience they target enjoy reading this sort of thing. But it would be interesting to dig down into the paper’s coverage and see if those who are being cited as “experts” to substantiate all the shock horror stories have a material, professional or moral stake in defining Web 2.0 as a folk devil themselves.
I prefer the “Web 3.0″ where it’s about the “semantic web”, because then it can be “any day now” for the next 50 years.
Boo! Wait till they find out about the singularity, then there will be the mother of all scare campaigns, lets not tell them.
Anyhoo, I’m reading an interesting book at the moment called ‘Here Comes Everybody’ by Clay Shirky, it’s about web 3.0 and social networks and the whole damn thing, and one of the things it tells us is that media as we know it is doomed and journalism……”is now less a profession than an activity”. One practiced by ‘everybody’.
I’ve stopped paying attention to these media and journalistic nutcases pretty well because the lot that are there now are dead man walking – though they like to think they are, they ain’t everybody, they are nobody.
I’m more interested in having conversations with and about the future media everybodies than these nobodies of the past.
The question is whether the ‘moral panic’ concept has not been extended well beyond its useful, critical role into an ideological one, used to deny the possibility that a social phenomenon might be a genuine negative development that we might want to attend to.
Take the whole concept of ‘net addiction’, DSMisation of psychology etc. Agreed that the ‘addiction’ metaphor becomes reified, but might it not label a phenomenon which is part of a more general process of the lapsing of more varied social engagement?
Or take a possibly clearer-cut example. Paedophilia is often labelled an MP, which it undoubtably is. But is it only that? Or has there been a real and significant chnage in predatory behaviour since the social changes of the 1960s. If the latter is even only possibly the case, does not the blanket use of the MP concept serve as a barrier, not an aid, to clear thinking?
More particularly, does it serve as a discipline boundary rider? Though it began in sociology, it is now almost exclusively used in cultural studies, which goes from a methodological limit – considering only cultural phenom – and institutes that, knowingly or otherwise, as a material limit, ie there is nothing but culture.
By that definition, any concern over social change is a moral panic, since the level of the social can’t be factored in – which makes it a lot easier to write and publish. Less factors to consider, no messy figures to crunch, etc. Is MP itself as a concept an aid to a different type of entrepreneurialism?
Web addiction?
Why if it’s something “new-fangled”, perceived as being a characteristic of “the younger generation”, does it warrant “addiction’s” negative connotation?
Why not a classification for “print addict”? Even worse, “print, picture & music” addict? I’ve been one of those since the middle 1940s. I’m in my 7th decade of indulging in it, often for more than 12 hours a day – a lifelong addict. I carved our a career from it & hooking others on the same addiction.
Oddly enough, print (& picture & music) addiction used to be considered entirely laudable. Those addicts who earned qualifications as a result of their addictions were lauded publicly and given the right to dress themselves in odd ancient regalia. Gaudeamus igitur!!
Now I prefer to use the Net rather than paper, ink, writing stick & piano. OMG – TOTALLY DEPRAVED! My Old Duck fingers find typing easier than writing. “But you can’t read a computer in bed!!” cried the gainsayers. Bulls**T. I’ve “readin’ & ritin’” on laptops for 12 years. Most of the world’s “out of copypright” literature is on the web and it’s a damn sight easier to read in bed on a cold night than a book.
What’s changed? The media in which speech, writing, art, music is created, published & accessed; the physical way it’s created & published; the size & nature of the multi-lingual and national audience it reaches. Not the knowledge-acquisition, creativity, communication etc that are part of literacy, numeracy, art- and music etc-creation and appreciation.
“Internet addict?”
Sociologists as Luddites! (After all, they wouldn’t be sociologists if they hadn’t been paper- & print-addicted, would they!)
DeeCee, that marvellous comment compels me to describe myself as a “networm” from now on, to acknowledge the fact that my lifelong print addiction has always been nicely euphemised by cheery images of anthropomorphised annelids.
It may well, jack. But then most of what I’ve read does fit the MP concept – in that little attempt is actually made to ascertain the real dimensions of the problem or whether the problem is (a) new or changed; (b) amenable to any action.
I suspect you are right that it comes to be used as an ideological device, but it doesn’t need to be.
They have also tried to get video game addiction in the ICD (International classification of diseases), but I think that is a far more legitimate claim, supported by many psycologists.
Hell, I’m a book addict, a movie addict, a net addict,a history addict, a cigarette addict (though probably not as bad as I used to be, but my intake has increased again slightly.I used to be a bit of a booze addict, but I guess that’s cured as I hardly drink at all now. I’ve always been what sociologists class as deviant, from about the age of ten, when I started to object to having to play sport because I preferred to read. (And write; in those very juvenile days I used to start every sentence with ‘and’.) Apparently my Scorpio moon is to blame.
That’ll be it, Paul!
I should point out that outside the lovely realm of American structural-functionalists, the label of “deviant” isn’t a normative one in sociology. Becker was a jazz musician and a drug user himself while he was studying others. It refers to a process of deviation and the stigma which gets socially attached to it, and isn’t a value judgement. That’s why some recent literature in the sociology of deviance prefers to use the term “social censure” – and there’s also some interesting questions as to whether deviance itself makes sense as a concept when social norms are so fluid.
That makes more sense, Mark. But this business about net addiction is nonsense. Would seem the wowsers are at it again, condemning everything that gives people pleasure. I do spend a bit of time on the net since I discovered LP, but I spend a lot more time working on my book, either reading, researching or writing, and watching TV. (I forgot that particular addiction).
I’m a supporter of Web2.0/3.0 and I think that most of the hype RE: the current technology has more to do with Techno Phobia than any real issue. We see it in a generation of people who grew up without computers and have trouble dealing with ANY aspect of technology (and probably change in general).
However, I do think there are issues of addiction that we too easily ignore. I personally know of three (3) marriages destroyed because of it (or at least, aided their demise). Of these three, two are now acting completely out of character and taking immense risks with complete strangers (flying off to cities to “hook up” for a flings – sometimes leaving children behind to care for themselves). The other one spends 12 hours a day in World of Warcraft.
But don’t get me wrong – this isn’t anything new – it’s just plain old addiction. They’re suckered in by the same things that make any addiction viable. Labelling it as anything else is pointless – it’s an addiction and should be treated accordingly. After all, I know just as many people who are addicted to fishing although, as the addiction is with dead fish, its impact on relationships is typically less damaging.