A ‘superstorm’: when moral panic and new risk discourses converge in the media

Abstract

There has been a proliferation of risk discourses in recent decades but studies of these have been polarised, drawing either on moral panic or new risk frameworks to analyse journalistic discourses. This article opens the theoretical possibility that the two may co-exist and converge in the same scare. I do this by bringing together more recent developments in moral panic thesis, with new risk theory and the concept of media logic. I then apply this theoretical approach to an empirical analysis of how and with what consequences moral panic and new risk type discourses converged in the editorials of four newspaper campaigns against GM food policy in Britain in the late 1990s. The article analyses 112 editorials published between January 1998 and December 2000, supplemented with news stories where these were needed for contextual clarity. This analysis shows that not only did this novel food generate intense media and public reactions; these developed in the absence of the type of concrete details journalists usually look for in risk stories. Media logic is important in understanding how journalists were able to engage and hence how a major scare could be constructed around convergent moral panic and new risk type discourses. The result was a media ‘superstorm’ of sustained coverage in which both types of discourse converged in highly emotive mutually reinforcing ways that resonated in a highly sensitised context. The consequence was acute anxiety, social volatility and the potential for the disruption of policy and social change.

Keywords:

• risk
• risk communication
• moral panic
• new risks
• food

Notes

^1. The newspapers that did not formally label their coverage campaigning can be divided into two groups. The first comprise the ‘stable mates’ of the campaigning newspapers which tended to take the lead from their campaigning counterparts but were less aggressive in their advocacy. The difference can be attributed to different editors. The second group comprise titles for instance, the Times and the Telegraph, which tend to have strong pro-business constituencies and were more ambivalent on the arguments for policy change (see Howarth 2012).

^2. There is a sizable body of literature on claims-making and risk. See, for instance, Brown (2006) and Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994).