The objects of moral panics are 'folk devils', be they drug-takers, Mods and Rockers, muggers, or more recently homosexuals, asylum-seekers, paedophiles, welfare scroungers, etc. France and Belgium are having a moral panic right now over Muslim women and the hijab/burka. As Stan Cohen wrote in Folk Devils and Moran Panics in 1972 (p. 9), the genesis of moral panics goes like this:
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised 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 resorted to ...
What's interesting about the Net Gen discourse is that it involves another rhetorical topos we came across in Block 1 - namely, the first-principle of technology, whereby we unfailing overestimate the consequences of emerging technologies (e.g. printing) while paying relatively little heed to the real, lasting, long-term effects. Graft this hysteria on to the postmodern concern over the condition of childhood and youth in westernised societies, and it's a wonder the Net Gen discourse has not been even more lasting and widespread than it has been.
It's fair to describe the Net Gen debate as an academic moral panic. Moral panics typically involve a frantic search for a response, for measures to protect the fabric of decent society. This is described by Goode and Ben-Yehuda in their 1994 book Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance:
the behaviour of some ... is thought to be so problematic to others, the evil they do, or are thought to do, is felt to be so wounding to the body social, that serious steps must be taken to control the behaviour, punish the perpetrators, and repair the damage ... typically [this response] entails strengthening the social control apparatus of society – tougher or renewed rules, more intense public hostility and condemnation, more laws, longer sentences, more police, more arrests and more prison cells ... a crackdown on offenders.
The scramble to rewrite institutional strategies and disciplinary curricula, in response to the appearance of Net Gen at the gates, is an example of such a response.
On moral panics
1) Moral panics
The objects of moral panics are 'folk devils', be they drug-takers, Mods and Rockers, muggers, or more recently homosexuals, asylum-seekers, paedophiles, welfare scroungers, etc. France and Belgium are having a moral panic right now over Muslim women and the hijab/burka. As Stan Cohen wrote in Folk Devils and Moran Panics in 1972 (p. 9), the genesis of moral panics goes like this:
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised 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 resorted to ...What's interesting about the Net Gen discourse is that it involves another rhetorical topos we came across in Block 1 - namely, the first-principle of technology, whereby we unfailing overestimate the consequences of emerging technologies (e.g. printing) while paying relatively little heed to the real, lasting, long-term effects. Graft this hysteria on to the postmodern concern over the condition of childhood and youth in westernised societies, and it's a wonder the Net Gen discourse has not been even more lasting and widespread than it has been.
It's fair to describe the Net Gen debate as an academic moral panic. Moral panics typically involve a frantic search for a response, for measures to protect the fabric of decent society. This is described by Goode and Ben-Yehuda in their 1994 book Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance:
the behaviour of some ... is thought to be so problematic to others, the evil they do, or are thought to do, is felt to be so wounding to the body social, that serious steps must be taken to control the behaviour, punish the perpetrators, and repair the damage ... typically [this response] entails strengthening the social control apparatus of society – tougher or renewed rules, more intense public hostility and condemnation, more laws, longer sentences, more police, more arrests and more prison cells ... a crackdown on offenders.
The scramble to rewrite institutional strategies and disciplinary curricula, in response to the appearance of Net Gen at the gates, is an example of such a response.