CRM 2302 final

Symbolic Interaction rests on the notion that...

- Humans act towards things based on the meanings those things have for them

- Meanings of things arise out of social interaction

- Meanings are created and changed through a process of interpretation

How do the meaning of things arise out of social interaction?

- Human interaction mediated by use of symbols and by interpretations

- Humans act towards things based on the meanings those things have for them (rooted in the socialization process)

- Meanings created and change through proccess of interpretation (society change, different symbols gained via different interpretive meanings

What does the term symbolic interaction refer to (in the words of Blumer)?

The peculiar and distinstive character of ineraction as it takes place between human beings. The peculiarity consists in the fact that human beings interpret or "define" each others actions instead of merely reacting to each others actions. Their "response" is mode made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach such actions. Thus, human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by asscertaining the meaning of one another's actions

What does Social Constructionism challange?

The world view that conventional knowledge is objective, unbaised observation of the world

- questioning things like why women/men are more concentrated in certain job spheres

- Asking questions and knowledge of how do we know what we do

- Knowledges produced and then passed along which makes it true

- Epidemiology

What does Social Construction take a critcal stance towards?

Our taken for granted ways of understanding the world, including ourselves

Example: Man and woman cetegories that are bound up with gender- Normative notion of masculinity and femininity in a culture

(Gender as a construct- Man and women to mean more then just sex)

What does Social Constructionism argue?

That the "creation of knowledge is rooted in social interaction between people through common language and shared meanings in particular contexts"

(Believe if you focus on how soical interactions and where they rise, you can pull them apart)

Example: "Illegal Alien"

A word used to describe undocumneted immigrants

- 1929 the word alien used in legislation in Canada

- There is power in the language you use. Words used creates interpretation for people such as fear, protective, anger, dehumanizing, etc

- It's actually not illegal to flee a country to enter another one that is a safer place (A right given to everyone by the UN via international law)

How is language important?

It is crucial in the interactions and creation of meanings attached to events, places, people, situations, etc

Example: Politcal speeches establishing meaning to create a narrative

Where do the ongoing creation of meanings occur and why are they important?

They occur in political, historical, economic, social and cultural environment

They are important for the social construction of knowledge and reality

Example: Political parties using things like catchphrases to push their agendas- the same messages over and over to associate those words with the party and influence others

How does the construction of knowledge get communicated?

Via different channels such as

- Laws

- Media

- Public opinion

It serves as a source of legitmation and justification

Example: People going onto the news and talking/showing only horrible crimes and saying crime is on the rise

- Creates the idea that crime is an increasing issue and fear surrounding it

The constructed knowledges becomes reality which then makes it

The "truth"

Messages however are not neutral

The creation of certain facts about people can lead to the harm of others via established truths

In Labelling Theory Deviance is...

Not a quality of the act, but rather a consequence of application by others of rules and cancation to an "Offender"

(No act is deviant in of itself, but the act of labelling which makes it so)

How are people placed on the "outside" in Labelling Theory?

Because their particular behaviour has been labelled as so by more powerful interest groups

- Postivist thought everyone shared the same norms so those who went against it would be pushed out and considered an outsider

- Behaviours only deviant because its against the norms

Becker focused on people relegated to the margins of socitey and found that...

- Socitey has many groups, each with their own set of rules and people belonged to many groups simultaneosuly

- Society has different groups, each with its own set of values

- Outsiders were the outside labeled group

Becker approached deviance from an occupational sociology approach and considered who?

Both those who "occupation" was deemed deviant/criminal as well as those who occupations was catching criminals (social audience, criminal justice system)

- A focus on the CJS as a whole

What is the Labelling Process according to Becker?

Society creates deviance and "outsiders" such as:

- Social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction constiutes deviance (society: creates deviance, is not homogenous but heterogeneous)

- By applying those rules to partucular people and labelling them as an outsider

(We uphold and apply those rules to those who do not abide by them)

- Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an "offender"

(Application of the consequneces we set aside for people who break the rules- devinace)

-The devient is the one whom that label has successfully been applied

- Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label

- It is the repose that matter for without it, deviant behaviour has not occurred

(Response is what matters)

How are outsiders chosen and labelled?

Via the degree to which people react to a given act as deviant varies greatly

- Varation over time (Things like heightened social attention on an issue)

- Characteristics of individual doing the act

- Response to victimization of some rather then others

Deviance is not a quality that lies in the behaviour itself but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who response to it

What Is Theory

A set of interconnected statements/propositions that explain how two or more events/factors relate to one another

What Do Criminological Theories Provide?

Tentative explainations as to why crimes are committed, who commits them and about the formal/informal social control systems

Focused on the conditions under which people commit crime and the systems

What are the two types of Criminological Theories?

Theories of Law and Criminal Justice (Law Scholars)

Theories of Criminal and Deviant Behaviour (Crm Scholars)

Theories of Law and Criminal Justice

Used to explain the making and enforcing criminal law

Deals with law and how its created, who decides what is "normal" and what is criminal behaviour

Law itself produces normality in society/status quo but also creates outliers and what's deviant

Theories of Criminal and Deviancy

Composed of

- Macro/Structural (Major groups of people)

- Mirco/Processual

(Small groups of people, sometimes individuals)

Criteria for Evaluating Theory

- Logical Consistency

- Scope

- Parsimony

- Testability

- Empirical Validity

- Usefulness and policy implications

What are some examples of the social, cultural, and political context's in 1960's USA that allowed the emergance of Labelling Theory and other Criminological thoughts?

- Civil rights moement

- Civil rights act 1964

- Voting rights act of 1964

- Assassination of Kennedy

- Martin Luther King

- Malcolm X

- Black Panthers

- Woemns rights movement

- Protest and roits against Vietnam war

- Attica 1971

- "Youth Culture"

Who Founded Symbolic Interactionism?

Blumer, but he credited Herbert Mead

Emergence of Labelling Theory is rooted in what?

Symbolic Interactionism

Labelling Thoery is considered not a thoery but a

Paradigm

When was the labelling perspective introduced?

1960's and 70's

Labelling Perspective Challenged what line of thinking?

Postivist Criminology (Bio, Psy, and Soc- all of which were rooted in determinism and traced the causes of crime to the individual and the environment)

What did the Labelling Perspective aruge about crime?

- Not an "objective" phenomenon but subjective. Meaning is given to a particular behaviour

- A social process (meanings given to events depended on negotiated definitions)

-The outcome of human interaction

The rise of the labelling perspectives accompanied critiques of what parts of the dominate image of Western Society in the 1950's?

- Society shares collective interest

- There is a consenus is a society on core values such as gender dynamics, religion, individualism, economic, common standards of deviance and conformity, idea of the nuclear family and more

What historical developments were societal reaction theories influenced by?

- Social Psychology

- Phenomenology: Sociological approach in seeking to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social actions, situations and words

-Ethnomethodology: Study of people's practices and methods (how social world is built and rebuilt by people's actions and throughts)

Societal Reaction Theories are said to be apart of what kind of criminology?

Critical Criminology

Being a part of Critical Criminology, Social Reaction Theories do what?

- Provide a critique of orthodox of mainstream criminology theories (Critique of deterministic nature of pos and clas. theories)

-Have anti-essentialist conception of human identity, including deviant identity (no intrisnic quality, meaning of things change throughout time and place, focus on social construction and roles, deviance as product of social construction)

-Have an ideoloigcal view that deviance and its control are inextricably linked to power dynamics in society

What does Blumer outline the compents of Symbolic interaction as based on Herbert Mead?

- Human being has a self (numerous messages daily and development via messages that form the self)

- Acts towards the self/making indcations to oneself is the central mechanism which human being faces and deals with the world (Messages inside and outside, socialization process make us aware of the stimulus around us, we make a point and indication that we are aware of it and create the self)

- Indication refers to taking notations of the stimuli (creation of symbols, language, gesters, etc)

-Indication via extricating it from its setting, to give it meaning or make it into an object

-Object is the procut of the indvidual dispoistion to the act (the process of interpretation) meaning is given to the intreptation of the stimuli construct the object

Stimuli vs Object

Stimuli: Indications that come to the self

- Looking at the people as you communicate and taking notice/making indications to the self of the communcations you are seeing

Object: Turns the stimuli into something for youself

- Pulling it from the setting and giving it meaning (defining the stimuli which turns it into an object)

The process:

Interpreting the symbol, taking the stimuli, attaching meaning (now an object), react to the stimuli and respond

Example: seeing someone yawn

- May assume they are tired or bored, this is turned into an object now

What is the Concept of the "I" as described by Mead (Blumer used self)

- That the authentic "I" doesn't exist, the "I" only develops through things like cultural norms, values, via the interaction of others

- Doesn't exist in symbolic interactionism (There's nothing hidden inside of us)

- The "I" is a reflection of the product of socialization you receive (Via community, family, friends, school, ect.)

- We become similar sometimes when it comes ot big symbols like norms, culture, rules, etc. due to the soicalization process

What is the self?

How one sees themselves (is depended on how others perceive us)

What is the mechanism of the self?

The process of interpretation

What are two important aspects of the "I" by mead?

- The recognition that roles and rules play a critical part in the formation of the "self"

- Self interpret the roles and rule and reacts to them and acting back on the enviroment/society

(Reaction itself becomes a stimuli for others to interpret and make into an object)

How do individuals respond to siutations?

By reading the symbols around them

- Symbols can be determined even just by observation

- Reality is being constructed as you interact with others

- There are things you don't realize are symbols as the interpretation has happened so many times it has become a part of us

If the self is not simply responding to events, how is it built?

Through social interactions (the self can also be rebuilt and readjusted_)

Collective construction of reality is done into?

Typifications

- Symbols clustered into meanings (Or message) in society that we are aware of whihc forms the bases of knowledge and how reality is constructed

The real world isn't object, concreate reaility but is consturcted on the bases of symbols, interpretations, actions, and reactions

How do human beings role-play by taking on the role of "the other"?

Refering to group reaction, people listen to the stimuli around them

Example: Having people in class interrupting means you are more likely to have more people doing the same

Things like peer pressure is also a part of the role-play

Deviance is not innate

(Not within the individual) but emergences in certain context and rules that are set up

Rules are created by

groups

Social rules are the creation of specific groups

• Not a marxist theory (only focus on people who have access to money, wealth and status)- Becker goes bigger

• Says there is power differential within society

The rules that end up bring broadly applied represent the rules of groups enjoying a power differential in society

• Old vs young (age, status); men vs women (sex); race; class, ethnicity

• State, government, police, legal systems

Becker contends that deviance is not static

• Different people/groups assign different deviance to different things

• We learn the rules via socialization and internalize them

Different social groups within society form their own operational rules

• Different groups judge different behaviours to be deviant

  • thus, the process of forming this reaction is intimately bound up with defining deviance

• Example:

  • Opposing political parties

  • Smoking weed

• Groups can have a range of potential reactions to rule-breaking, from ignoring it, to mild reaction, to outright scorn, to criminal proceedings

Deviance is created by

• Society; not through causes such as “social factors”, but by making the rules that govern behaviour, and reacting to certain rule-breakers by considering them deviant

The label can create deviant behavior by

• Catching the attention of the social audience, which then watches more closely for deviance

  • More probability of them being caught by agents of social control

  • Particularly those in occupations that deal with deviance

• Being internalized by the individual, who then accepts this self-concept of deviance

  • Example: Strippers

  Things associated with it, parents' reactions towards them dancing naked with other things such as a drug user, or sex addict, etc. reaction becomes internalized (negative messages), affects the self (process of interpretation- labelling theory pretty much uses the same thing). Person who thought it was a performance now as something they shouldn’t do (idea that the job is low, something to look down on) and the label is now internalized

• Blanket statements placed onto person

• Particularly lower-class individuals, who start off with fewer opportunities to make good in the conventional world, and accept that crime is their only real option for success

“Master Status”

• Process in which a particular trait becomes the individuals central identifying characteristics

Becoming Marihuana User: Becker

Becker studied- 50 qualitative interviews- and proposed a theory of the processes of how one learns to become a marijuana user. His focus is on the social process and not psychological, character traits, and on deviant careers

first time weed user must

learn to overcome barriers (social control) to maintain their career use

Barriers described by becker

• Restricted supply access

• Hiding use from nonusers: secrecy

• Definition of use as (im)moral (for the individual using it)

User may not escalated or continue the drug use on a regular basis

• Depending on the struggle within the barriers

Steps to weed user

• Learning the techniques to produce real effects

• Experiencing the effects

• Perceiving the effects as enjoyable and pleasurable

two separate, albeit overlapping, learning processes that users must master if they with to become regular consumers of the drug

• On the one hand, novice users must learn to navigate the social, cultural, and political climate of being a “deviant”

  • Example: They must learn the vocabulary and cultural nuances of a deviant social group, techniques to avoid being ostracized by people who disapprove of their lifestyles, and how to conceal their use from agents of control (Becker, 1963)

• Additionally, they must learn the proper way to consume the drug and perevie its effects and pleasurable – the theoretical aspect

Learning

• It cannot be smoked like tobacco: “Take a lot of air, you know, and.. You don’t smoke it like a cigarette (pg. 237)

• Social process you learn how to use weed in a group (a group process → peers will tell you how)

• Won’t continue if they don’t learn the technique

Experiencing

• Learning to perceive the effects of the drug: “the high”

• The experience and the interpretation of the process 

• Presence of symptoms caused by marihuana use and the recognition of these symptoms and their connection by the use with the use of the drug

Perceiving enjoyment

• Enjoy the effects of the drug- if the effects are not enjoyable than user refrain from using

• High experience by yourself and how you felt about it → good or bad, interpretation of that

• Connection between enjoyment of weed and usage to continue use

Edwin Lemert

Interested in how society defined deviance

• A sociologist not a criminologist

  • Same as Becker

•  Is applicable to crime

Lemerts approach

His approach states that emphasis should not only be placed on the offender, but also on the social control system and how it can contribute to deviance 

• Not just the person and social norms and rules we need to understand but also need to focus on the agents and social control systemes (both official and unofficial)

  • Examples of informal social control systems: Parents, Religion, Teachers and school

  • Examples of formal social control systems: CJS 

Revered the order to traditional sociology of deviance: types of social control can lead to deviance and crime

• You commit a crime then you get caught → says the law itself creates crime and criminality (not the other way around)

  • Social value system is what causes deviancy

Primary deviation (Original)

• Initial act of deviance

• Arises due to a variety of factors, causes

  • Things like barriers (access, morality, secrecy in Becker)

  • Dealt with through normalization, or management and control

    • No great effect on the actors psychology or status 

    • Management can be done in the formal or informal control sense

    • Things like getting blamed and shamed for doing something wrong by the collective

  • “Excused, Reationalized, or Otherwise Socially Accepted”

    • Say this is what happened to them and accept what they did

Secondary Deviation (effect)

• The responses individuals make to the problems caused by societal reaction to their primary deviation

  • These problems are moral problems

    • Stigmatization, social controls, punishments, segregation

  • Variety of reasons people react differently to the primary deviation

    • Things like if a man cheats vs a woman

      • Labeled differently 

    • Could catch the attention of others

    • Smoking marijuana in the 1950s, sex trades workers

  • They greatly affect an individuals psychology, social roles, and self-regard

    • Things like internalizing the norms of society and thinking this is how you have to act (woah how the self develops and all that)

8 steps that lead to secondary deviance

The act of breaking an established rule (primary deviance)

Penalties to the norm breaker because of the act

A continuation of the primary deviance by the offender

Increased punitive responses by social control agents

Continued deviance by the wrongdoer, often with increasing resentment over the penalties

The acquisition of a “tolerance quotient” in which the community stigmatizes the offender

An amplification of the deviant behaviour as a reaction to the stigmatization

Full acceptance of the status of deviant

Lemert on social control

views that social control causes deviance and When others decide a person is dangerous or morally repugnant, they do something to him, often unpleasant, which is not done to other people

• Norms in society there as a control system (family, laws, religion, schooling, etc)

• Others decide- morally repugnant (things like murder, pedophiles)

• Dangerous- we put people in solitary confinement or prison

• Unpleasant- don’t give them anything nice in prisons

• Example: Hurtful humiliation (asylums), court appearances, or formal controls to limit freedom (prison)

The justification for controlling deviants devolves

• from larger moral ideologies, and from laws, policies. 

  • Morally ideology → influencing

Subculture

•  group of people getting together based on certain things they come up with norms different then the dominant culture (varying degree of there agreeance to dominate group)

• A part of a certain subculture after getting the label they can’t shake- more into the subculture

• When you have a subculture to go back to, secondary deviance is much harder to shake

Prison Subculture

• The newcomer can absorb the recidivist views of a perceived inability to make it on the outside

  • Prisoners themselves hang around with other prisoners. You are bombarded with the notion that you can’t make it on the outside, even if you are going to programs, hearing from other prisoners in yards, cells, etc.

  • Other prisoners telling the newcomer that they have to go back to the subculture because that's the only way to make it

• But does inability to actually “make it” on the outside come because society reacts to the label of convict and denies opportunities, or because the deviant has absorbed a view of what the world is like?

  • Already had at least part of the label with you beforehand

  • Status becoming master status (deviance becomes master status)

  • Acceptance of the label

Secondary deviance is defined by Lemert as

Deviant behaviour… which becomes a means of defense, attack, or adaptation to the overt and covert problems created by the societal reaction to primary deviation”

Ervin Goffman

Canadian-American sociologist 

• Born in Alberta

• Studies micro-level interactions

• Produced many theoretical insights that are very helpful to study the deviance and crime

  • He actually thought study crime was a waste of time (lol)

  • Thought there would never be a “general theory of deviance”

• His worked related to criminology: “total institution” and “stigma”

Stigma

As a deeply discrediting characteristic

stigma can be understood as the

relationship between the atribute and the sterotype

The attribute must be defined as

negative characteristic by the “normal” people

A Stigmatized Individual

Is perceived as having a tarnished character

As “reduced in our mind from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one”

Has an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated

Three-Category Typology of Stigma- Goffman

abomination of the body

blemishes of the individual character”

tribal" stigma

abomination of the body

• which refers to various physical deformities including blindness and physical disabilities

  • Any physical abnormality

“blemishes of the individual character

• perceived as “weak will, treacherous and rigid beliefs, dishonest sometimes inferred from or could include anything from a “mental disorder” and “homosexuaility” to “radical political behaviour, alcoholism, unemployment and imprisonment”

  • Moral defecates to character

tribal" stigma

• of race, nation and religion, which are “transmitted through family lineage” and possessed equally in all members of a family, including class status. Group membership and identity can be in themselves sources of stigma

Goffman proposes two categories of stigma as

discredited” and the “discreditable”

Discreditable

Refers to the individuals differences that are neither known nor immediately perceivable by observes

• Ex. Criminal Record, Infertility

• Have the full knowledge that they have the stigma- manage information to people (who, what, when, how much)

• Being an alcoholic and drinking at a party, partner says to not drink more than 1, it's not known to the people at the party

• Depends on the social context, the stigmatized person has to reveal “Stigmatic attribute”

Discredited

 The individual whose difference are evident or known immediately to the observer or the public

• Ex, Skin colour, facial features, deformity

Goffman describes “passing” as

the management of undisclosed discredited information about the self”

Managing information about oneself

Passing can take many forms

• Dividing the social world

  • Aware of the public spaces they are in and who they talk to

  • Disclosure to intimate/loved ones but not to strangers or acquaintances

  • Ex: failing classing and telling someone at a party that school is doing well when asked

    • Can predict social reaction from close friends easier than that of people you don’t know

    • Protecting self and self-identity

  • Ultimately to protect ourselves

• Withdrawal

  • Removing oneself or distancing from social situation

• Managing the amount of information shared

  • Individual who carries stigma is at the centre of the management

Women’s Management of the Stigma of Criminal Records

Interviewed 21 formerly incarcerated women living in ON about their experiences and situation of employment post imprisonment despite having a criminal record

Options available to former incarcerated women to question of criminal record

 Lie, tell the truth, or try to avoid it

Managing the stigma of criminal record regarding employment

• Women assessed the employer policies, referrals and place of employment before disclosing criminal record information; and strategies women use to manage the criminal record are carried and responsive to the situation:

  • Want to know that the policy is in regard to criminal record so they can know what will be disclosed

  • “If they don’t ask don’t tell”

    • Passing as a non-criminalized person

    • Carries a risk of being found out; women felt very anxious on daily basis

  • “Just be honest”

    • All women who were honest never heard back from employers

  • “Playing Honestly”

    • “Got into a legal matter”

  • “It’s not who I am”

    • Distinction of self: identity distinctions suggest that employability can be part of an identity-repariung narrative, and a resource mobilized to resist the internalization of oppressive criminalized stigma

Murders Relative: Managing Stigma Negotiating Identity

Author interviewed 15 relatives (two rounds)- difficulty recruiting participants

Experiences of Stigma by relatives of people convicted of murder is underpinned

(Murder is a unique stigma- stigma is carries is different compared to other offences)

first group for expierincing stigma

• First in the everyday construction of murder rooted within perception of poor parenting and notion of family toxicity

  • Others view family members as the “primary toxic agents”

    • Parents and families at fault

    • Person who becomes a murdered lived in a certain household that was toxic

      • By extension- family is the cause and should have known better

      • Ex: Columbine High School

        • Mass school shooting

        • Family looked down upon

  • A moral stigma of the “failed family”, failed parenting

    • As result feeling of shame and blame

second is the

• common-sense notion to what murder is

  • Rooted in violence and evil notion of the act

  • The notion of the dangerous stranger, in the dark alley, attacking and killing (source of info “true crime”)

  • Even the relatives of the murderers in the study, allude to murder as a dangerous violent act and held the belief (some) that their brother/son was not a murderer

    • Relative conception of murders still the common-sense one, hard to conceptualize 

  • Families: aware of the public’s perception about them; their new social status as murders relatives

    • Ex: “You have changed. You are now a murderer's mum ""I feel very degraded as through everything I have strived to be as a respectable person had all gone. I felt like a criminal”

Two areas of mangement

Open awerness and closed awarness context

Open Awareness Context

• Managing space

  • Deciding where they go and when

  • Isolating- avoiding going out, public spaces, and restricted outings

• Managing self presentation

  • Influencing others impressions

  • Dissension: Challenge the application of master status ‘murder’ by arguing their relative was not a murderer 

    • Perceptions of what a murderer is vs their relative

    • Think they should have gotten manslaughter instead of murder charge

    • The relative’s culpability was mitigated by victim

    • Players within the trial affect the outcome (judge)

  • Collective support; sought more sympathetic audience for their self presentations

    • Aftermath: counseling support for murder relatives

Closed Awareness Contexts

• Managing information

  • Re-presentation: withhold specifics:

    • “My son is in prison”

• Selective Disclosure: 

  • Decides to whom reveal

• Therapeutic Disclosure

  • Off-load one’s rouble and garner support

• Preventative disclosure:

  • Easier to be rejected by an acquaintance than by an intimate

Deviancy Amplification Spiral

Conceptual framework proposed by Leslie Wilkins

Falls under labeling theory

• The concept holds that the reaction to deviant behaviour by the official agents may increase the deviant behaviour rather than reduce it

  • Reactions to deviant behaviour and amplifies it

Deviancy Amplification

Is the product of several distinct stages of social reaction

• The deviant groups are socially and spatially isolated from mainstream society

  • Behaviour and conduct- Space being where they are but doesn’t always have to

  • Ex: Indigenous people, drug users, homeless people, project group housing (Vanier, Cashin at home)

• Because of this social distance the information about their activities travels through several media (forms of communication) before reaches the majority

The groups act of deviance are again fed back to the public in a

distorted and sensational format which stimulates further outrage and demand for more law enforce 

There ensues a cycle…

• No funding for shelters, People getting more upset- homeless people getting tickets for being on private land but they don’t have anywhere to go- harsher laws and criminalization making giving them the label of criminal and deviant, getting them out of the streets and away from public eye

The players (media, police, politcations)

amplify and distort the acts of the deviant group

New definitions of old crimes

•  Mugging as opposed to garroting

  • Arthur Hills (1972)

    • Stabbed to death as he returned home- no witness present at the scene

    • Case went into newsprint- problem was there were no witnesses nor was he living with anyone (only seen that was nothing in his pockets)- Police calling it mugging, people not knowing what that is (american word)- Repackaged act into new definition and new life/meaning, have to identify people who commit this act- said that mugging that its youth stealing their things with a weapon, as seen in America

Moral panic theory

several factors must be present for societal attention to an issue to constitute a moral panic:

• Concern: some reported conduct or event sparks anxiety

  • Media reporting

  • Ex: International Students being blamed for housing crisis, government looked to to fix the issue as media reports it

• Hostility: the perpetrators and portrayed as “folk devil” the personified symbol of the supposed problem- cultural scapegoats whose conduct appalls onlookers

  • Need someone to blame in moral panic

  • Scapegoat: take the group of people and make them the folk devil because we don’t want to face other issues within the society

    • Issues complicated, blaming a group = easier

    • Simplistic explanation to a complex problem

• Consensus: the negative social reaction is broad an unified; public sensitization to the issue- the fear that a “cherished way of life in in jeopardy”

• Disproportionality: the extent of the conduct by deviants, or the threat it poses are exaggerated, so are the punitive social control responses

  • Reaction by public exaggerated 

  • Actual threat to the reaction not proportionate

• Volatility: the media reporting and the associated panic emerges, context gives a panic the power to the influence law and social control (youth culture defying the traditional norms)

Concern

• some reported conduct or event sparks anxiety

  • Media reporting

  • Ex: International Students being blamed for housing crisis, government looked to to fix the issue as media reports it