Slides prepared for a guest lecture to Cultural Studies students at Ghent University, 13th Dec 2010

1. Moral Panics and Games
University of Ghent, 14th Dec 2010
Jason Rutter
Jason.Rutter@soc.kuleuven.be

2. • The beginning - Mods vs Rockers
• Reporting of Moral Panics
• Attitudes to Moral Panics
• Responses to Moral Panics
• Games - a modern Moral Panic
• Addiction & health
• Non-events
• Games & violence
• A model of Moral Panics
• What’s the role of Moral Panics?

3. Moral Panics

4. Jock Young, 1971, The Drugtakers: The Social
Meaning of Drug Use
Stanley Cohen, 1972, Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. &
Roberts B., 1978, Policing the Crisis: Mugging the
State and Law and Order
Goode, E. & Ben Yehuda, N., 1994, Moral Panics:
The Social Construction of Deviance

5. Jock Young, 1971, The Drugtakers: The Social
Meaning of Drug Use
Stanley Cohen, 1972, Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. &
Roberts B., 1978, Policing the Crisis: Mugging the
State and Law and Order
Goode, E. & Ben Yehuda, N., 1994, Moral Panics:
The Social Construction of Deviance

6. Key Quotation!
Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of
moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons
emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and
interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical
fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by
editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people;
socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and
solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to;
the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and
becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite
novel and at other times it is something which has been in
existence long enough, but suddenly appear in the limelight.
„
“
Sometime the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in
folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious
and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes
as those in legal and social policy or even in the way society
conceives itself.
Cohen, 1973: 1

7. The beginning -
Mods vs Rockers

8. http://www.oldpolicecellsmuseum.org.uk/page_id__404_path__0p77p203p254p.aspx
Mods Rockers
Suits Leather jackets
Scooters Motorcycles
Effeminate Oafish
The Who & Small Faces Elvis & Gene Vincent

9. • Fights between young mods & rockers
- 1964
• UK south coast seaside resorts -
Clacton, Margate, Brighton &
Bournemouth
• Not a new phenomenon
• Reporting in the media

10. http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/103/l_2e62e12c1eae56dd531f68a143747947.jpg

11. Mods invading the beach at Margate, Kent waving sticks and throwing
bottles at retreating Rockers, 18 May 1964
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8055223.stm

12. "vermin"
"odious louts"
“mutated locusts”
"sawdust Caesars"
"internal enemies"
“grubby hordes
of louts and
sluts”
Cohen, pp38-40 http://www.oldpolicecellsmuseum.org.uk/page_id__407_path__0p77p203p254p.aspx

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61ks18Bd7I

14. What makes a moral
panic?

15. New Cultural Approach to Criminology
• Not about measuring
• Sets the stage - ethnomethods
• Gives ‘less(Cohen, p.16) to the actors than the
audience’
attention
• Deviance not just about rule breaking
• Society decides which rules and when to
apply them (cf Becker, Outsiders, 1963)
• Labelling is at the heart of deviance

16. Reporting of events not
unbiased - tends to
stylise and
sensationalise

17. Specific types of
activity singled out for
large amounts of media
attention

18. Reporting of Moral Panics
1. Exaggeration & Distortion - ‘Over-reporting’
numbers, effects, damage. Emotive language.
Repetition of false stories
2. Prediction - What happened will happen again.
Reporting of none-events
3. Symbolization - Individual signs represent the
moral panic. ‘Dramatized and ritualistic
interviews’ (p.29)
Cohen, 1972

19. Key Quotation!
There appear to be three processes in
such symbolization: a word (Mod)
becomes symbolic of a certain status
(delinquent or deviant); objects
(hairstyles, clothing) symbolize the
word; the objects themselves become
symbolic of the status (and the
„
“
emotions attached to the status).
Cohen, 1973: 27

20. Segments of a society
are singled out a
deviant, dangerous or
demanding regulation
(‘folk devils’)

21. Attitudes to Moral Panics
1. Orientation - Events seen as disaster or doom. Part
of a bigger problem
2. Images - ‘Spurious Attribution’. Labelling as
‘hooligans’, ‘thugs’, ‘vermin’, etc.
3. Causation - Social consequences. Sign of the
times. Sick society. Cabalism.
Cohen, 1972

22. Events are framed as a
consequence of larger
social problems

23. Responses to Moral Panics
1. Sensitization - Creating awareness. Developing a
specific threat. Reclassifying events to be part of
the threat.
2. Societal Control - ‘Rescue and remedy’
I. Diffusion - Creeps from area of initial impact
II. Escalation - Need to stop things getting out of hand
III. Innovation - Need for wider action or legislation
3. Agent of Control - Police, Courts, Experts, Moral
Entrepreneurs
Cohen, 1972

24. Key Quotation!
Moral barricades are manned by
editors, bishops, politicians and other
right-thinking people; socially
accredited experts pronounce their
diagnoses and solutions.
„
“
Cohen, 1973: 1

25. Folk Devil Moral Entrepreneur

26. Folk Devil Moral Entrepreneur

27. Jack Thomson
Expert & Moral Entrepreneur

28. Amplificatin of
Deviance

29. Key Quotation!
The media have long operated as agents of
moral indignation in their own right; even if
they are not self-consciously engaged in
crusading or muck-racking, their very
reporting of certain facts can be sufficient to
enerate concern, anxiety, indignation or
panic. When such feelings coincide with a
perception that particular values need to be
„
“
protected, the pre-conditions for new rule
creation or social problem definition are
present.
Cohen, 1973: 16

30. reinfo rce
ral Panics
Mo
“Right and proper way for a
person of this gender, age and
nation to behave and to be.”
Critcher, 2009, p.18
Critcher, C., (2009) 'Widening the Focus: Moral Panics
as Moral Regulation', British Journal of Criminology.
49 (1), pp.17-34.

31. Games - a modern Moral Panic

32. RACE
GENDER
VIOLENCE
ADDICTION
SEXUAL CONTENT

33. Alan Titmarsh Show, ITV, March 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7_aJtpUWT4

34. Games are
a threat to
CHILDHOOD

35. rotecting
‘P
ldhoo d’
C hi
Health
Family
Friends
Control
Innocence

36. Children can be both the focus
of moral panics and the
victims of the panic’s subject

37. Victims

38. Game
Addiction

39. Panorama: Addicted to Games
BBC TV, 6th Dec 2010

40. Obesity

41. Wellspring UK
Britain’s first fat camp for teenagers
The camp’s clinical director, Susan
Borgman, agrees about the causes of the
obesity epidemic and says: ‘We can
trace it back to the early Eighties.
‘Kids began buying video and computer
games and this also coincided with a
time when the rising cost of living
meant more parents were going out to
work and less supervision meant more
convenience meals.
The Sun, 28th Jul 2008

42. 8th Jan 2009

43. DESPERATE Billy Robbins holds the unenviable
title of the World's Heaviest Teenager - after
topping 60 STONE.
His life-threatening weight - half a ton -
follows years of overfeeding by his misguided
mother, Barbara.
Billy, 19, was housebound for three years before
doctors told Barbara she was literally killing
him with love.
He spent his days watching TV and playing video
games as Barbara waited on him hand and foot.
8th Jan 2009

45. The Sun, 13th Nov 2010

46. CRIPPLING bone disease rickets has made a shock
comeback - because kids are staying indoors with
video games instead of playing in the sunshine.
The condition - rife in gloomy 19th-century
slums but wiped out in Britain in the 1930s -
has been found in more than A FIFTH of children
in a Southampton study.
And unlike the olden days, when it was linked
with poverty, medics say it is now just as rife
in middle-class youngsters.
[...]
Stunned study leader Professor Nicholas Clarke
said: "It is quite astonishing. This is a
completely new occurrence that has evolved over
the last 12 to 24 months.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3225824/Game-addict-kids-hit-by-extinct-bone-disease.html

47. Raoul Moat

48. FURY erupted last night over plans for a Raoul
Moat book, movie and game ... before the man he
killed has even been laid to rest.
[...]
And last night gaming websites showed the cover
of Grand Theft Auto Rothbury - a version of the
Xbox hit Grand Theft Auto.
It is named after the Northumberland town where
Moat, 37, hid then shot himself after his gun
rampage in which he shot ex-lover Samantha
Stobbart, 22, killer her lover Chris Brown, 29,
and shot and blinded Pc David Rathband, 42 in
both eyes.
[...]
Samantha’s grandmother, Ann Hornsby, 69, said
[...] “It is sick - it’s blood money. The game
is beyond belief.”
Daily Star, 21st July 2010: http://www.mcvuk.com/static/images/assets/565/1055_DailyStar_GTARothbury.jpg

49. Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury

50. Take 2 sue Express Newspapers
• Story had no truth
• Did not contact Rockstar games
• Box cover was a photoshop creation
• ‘Substantial’ damages donated to charity of
Rockstars choosing
• Daily Star apologised
• Removed story from web site

51. ON 21 July we published an article claiming that
the video games company Rockstar Games were
planning to release a version of their popular
Grand Theft Auto video games series titled
“Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the
cover of this game, solicited comments from a
family member impacted by the recent tragedy and
criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged
plans.
We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the
story before publication and did not contact
Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We
also did not question why a best selling and
critically acclaimed fictional games series
would choose to base one of their most popular
games on this horrifying real crime event.
Daily Star, 26th July 2010: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/145880/Rockstar-Games-Grand-Theft-Auto-An-apology

52. Perpetrators

53. Game
Violence

54. Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe, BBC, Sept 2009

55. School Shootings

56. Virginia Tech Massacre
April 16th 2007
Seung-Hui Cho - 2nd year BIS student
Two attacks separated by two hours
Killed 32: Wounded 17
Committed suicide.

57. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbwyF6o1hw

58. A Media Friendly Massacre
Pictures of himself holding
weapons, an 1,800-word
rambling diatribe, and video
clips in which he expresses
rage, resentment, and a desire
to get even with oppressors.
Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2009, p.29

59. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KElyLrrTLB0

60. Seung-Hui Cho

61. Seung-Hui Cho

63. Park Chan-wook’s ‘Oldboy’

64. Park Chan-wook’s ‘Oldboy’

65. Diagnosis of ‘selective
mutism’ & ‘major
depression’ in childhood

66. Hide mental health history in high
School
Counselling sessions withdrawn
given slight improvement in
communication
Suicidal and homicidal thoughts

67. ‘Pathological shyness’ worsened in
college
Increasingly ‘dark’ contributions to
creative writing course
Reports of stalking
Involuntary hospitalisation

68. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJm5cZ3SNM

69. A Model of
Moral Panics

70. 1. Emergence
2. Media inventory
3. Moral entrepreneurs
4. Experts
5. Coping & resolution
6. Fade away
7. Legacy
Chas Critcher, 2003, Moral Panics and the Media

71. Emergence
• A general threat is identified:
• In what form does the ‘problem’ emerge?
• What is perceived as novel about it?
• Why and how is it a threat to moral/
social order?

72. Media Inventory
• Preliminary explanation of threat
by media
• Who or what is stereotyped?
• What kind of stereotype is involved?
• Is there an identifiable folk devil?
• What evidence is there of exaggeration,
distortion, prediction & symbolization?
• Do the media become sensitized?

73. Moral Entrepreneurs
• Agents offer analysis and remedies:
• Who are the moral entrepreneurs?
• Do they lead or follow the media?
• What orientations, images or explanations
are evident?

74. Experts
• ‘Expert’ opinion is presented:
• Who claims to have expertise?
• On what grounds do they claim
expertise?
• Is such expertise accredited by the
media?

75. Coping & Resolution
• Solutions are advocated:
• What solutions are offered & by whom?
• What measures are instigated & by
whom?
• Are these procedural and/or legal?
• In what ways are these effective/symbolic?

76. Fade Away
• The moral panic disappears or
becomes more visible:
• When and why does the end occur?
• Might the moral panic reoccur?
• What status the the problem
subsequently have?

77. Legacy
• A general threat is identified:
• What are the long term effects of the
issue?
• How is it related to previous and
subsequent issues?

78. Key Quotation!
To seek for evidence of the ‘the
effects of media violence’ is to
persist in asking simplistic
questions about complicated
social issues.
Buckingham (1997: 67)
„
“
Buckingham, D. (1997) ‘Electronic child abuse? Rethinking the media’s effects on
children’, in M. Barker & J. Petley (Eds.), Ill Effects: The Media / Violence Debate (pp.
63–77). Routledge, London: Sage.

79. Moral Panics on Games hide discussions
about young people and:
Parenting
Sexuality
Care by schools
Mental health
Access to guns
Food industry

80. Who Benefits?
• Media?
Attracts audiences; Drive sales; Develops a voice
• Moral Entrepreneurs?
Publicise agenda; Strengthen importance; influence policy
• Experts?
Develop profile; User engagement; REF...
• Games Industry?
Publicise games; Develop mainstream; Show responsibility

81. B u t ...
Do
Gamers?

82. Jason Rutter
Web: www.madebyjase.com
Slides: www.slideshare.net/Jasieboy
Twitter: @JaseRutter
@StevoProject
@DigiplayProject
Jason.Rutter@soc.kuleuven.be