Page 575 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| V olence and Med a: From Med a Effects to Moral Pan cs

parodies, imitations, and other forms of meaning-making, indicates that hu-
mans are active producers often at odds with commercial producers.

moraL PaniCs anD moraL EnTrEPrEnEurs

The persistence of such controversy around media effects research may be un-
derstood as a deeper crisis in how we think of children, technology, and threats
in the modern world. These periodic concerns expressed as anxiety over “media
violence” are given the term moral panics.
Moral panics are public campaigns that often call for censorship or express
outrage at behavior or fantasies of particular lower-status social groups when
those same groups are perceived as escaping the control of the dominant sta-
tus group. They occur often during periods of social and technological change
and may crystallize around a particular emotional issue. The early Salem witch
burnings were facilitated by the panic induced by male clergy members who felt
threatened by the increasing power of women in the church. Closer to our time
period, concerns over comic books, pool hall attendance, heavy metal and rap
music, television violence and sex, films, and a host of media activities have come
under public scrutiny for their supposed corruption of morals and youth. In the
1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center went after heavy metal bands for their
supposed effect on youth and the belief that such music “caused” teenage sui-
cides. Today, it is conservative groups like Focus on the Family attacking Barbie
dolls and Teletubbies or the Parents Television Council decrying acts of televi-
sion violence and gore, while liberal groups attack the computer games Manhunt
and Grand Theft Auto for their racial and gender stereotypes and simulated sex
in hidden codes. While racists and sexist attitudes persist in our society, the de-
gree to which media cause those attitudes has yet to be demonstrated by effects
research, and media and First Amendment scholars argue that the values of an

Moral entrePreneurs and Media ConsuMPtion

Originally coined by the sociologist Howard Becker in his 1963 work, Outsiders: Studies in
the Sociology of Deviance, moral entrepreneurs work as crusading reformers attempting to
clean up what they perceive as the failure of lower-status groups. With humanitarian intents,
such groups and individuals often work in a paternalist fashion to shape the behavior of those
in social classes below them, usually taking on and being offended by the representations of
working- or lower-class culture. Moral entrepreneurs work to mobilize social groups and the
public at large against what they perceive as threats to the dominant social order, helping to
define what is considered deviant behavior. The use of labeling and stereotyping often op-
erates in constructing definitions of what is deviant. These labels are, in turn, used by moral
entrepreneurs to support their actions against the offending representations. For example,
by invoking moral outrage against rock music, the Parents Music Resource Center signaled
to concerned parents that they shared their values and concerns. This solidarity is, in turn,
cemented by creating an “out” group, while reinforcing the prejudices of the “in” group.