Stop these aliens!

Teaching the theory of moral panic to first year BA

Journalism students

Victoria Neumark Jones

Associate professor, London Metropolitan

University

You’ve seen the stories…

• http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/458662/Romanians-bombard-website-for-UK-jobs

• http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/462081/Immigration-BOMBSHELL-for-Cameron-as-number-of-Romanians-and-Bulgarians-in-Britain-TREBLE

• http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/467990/Number-of-Romanians-after-jobs-in-UK-doubles-in-one-year

Now let’s play Express Bingo

http://expressbingo.org.uk/

Shout out if you can see any scoring story

Who do you think pays to read this?

How do we integrate explaining/exploring this to BA

Journalism?

It’s a gateway to the study of moral panic, so to helping students question assumptions that underlie media practice.

But before we get into that…….

London met journalism:

• No long lectures

• Workshop groups of 20-25

• Practical activities, to develop writing and social skills

• High student satisfaction rate: 89%

• Particularly on “my teachers are good at explaining things” 96%

Pedagogic rationale

• Employability: social skills, quickness, analysis, expressiveness

• Use of playfulness in education: ludicity

• Learning through doing

• Students get bored

• So do I

Theoretical background• Building on a theoretical base which owes much to Pierre Bourdieu (1986), David Crystal (1998

and passim), Habermas (1984-7), the constructivism of Piaget (1945) and Vygotsky (1978), as well as anthropological notions of performativity (eg, Evans-Pritchard 1937 and Lyotard 1984), with Bruner’s work on narrative (1986) session plans link rigour and creativity.

• In brief, Bourdieu (1986) outlines the immense advantage conferred on those who are brought up with sufficient social and cultural capital, often generated within the high aspirations and practices of successful families. Many of our students do not have this kind of home environment. In consequence, they can be at a disadvantage in social environments other than those of their peer groups. Fatal limitation for a journalist!

• Crystal (1998, 1999) talks of “ludicity” as a way to gain confidence and mastery of language, specifically with word games. Vygotksy (1978) thinks that language can grow as the child takes over control of language used initially with other children and adults:  development can be seen as internalising process stimulated by social interaction. Habermas (1984-7) writes that communicative action serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge, in a process of achieving mutual understandings. For Habermas, communicative action is the process through which people form their identities. Communicative action is the essence of journalism, so developing a pedagogy in which students’ performance within sessions builds their confidence, is to enable their own creativity to flower – though within the boundaries of correct English usage and professional and ethical guidelines.

• This kind of performativity, adumbrated in the analysis by Evans-Pritchard of the Azande (1937) and applied to education by Lyotard (1979) and his many followers, should give students the wherewithal to learn effectively, even if the material is difficult for them. As Piaget said (in Conversations with Jean Piaget): "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980: 132).

Moral panic, then

Stanley Cohen, prof at LSE. His Ph D thesis, pub in 1972. revised several times since then.

Cohen speaks

http://onlineclassroom.tv/sociology/catalogue/classic_collection/stan_cohen_-_folk_devils_and_moral_panics

Cohen unpicked the mods and rockers in seaside towns in …

1960s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lw86RK8-c

Moral panic is ordinary people PLUS media outrage

• An idea he developed further over decades.

• It is society regulating norms by scapegoating deviants through labelling:

• three ideas that need teaching…..

Scapegoating

• Think of a time you’ve been blamed for something you didn’t do. Why did that happen?

• Thrown out into the wilderness

Deviants: Not like usWhat would you never do? Work in pairs.

The idea of leaving a path

Labelling

This?

Or

this?

Fat-shaming, slut-shaming, body-shaming:

Can we make our own gallery of folk devils?

Cohen identifies seven types liable to be identified as folk

devils

Young, working class violent males

Chavs:

Owen

Jones

on the

riots

School violence, bullies, shoot-outs

Remember this recent story

Trojan Horse: Birmingham schools 'plot' probe widened14 April 2014 Last updated at 21:29 BSTAn investigation into an alleged bid by Muslims to take over the

governance of some schools in Birmingham has been widened by the city council.

The authority said 25 schools were now under the spotlight and it was considering more than 200 submissions, many emails or calls from staff, parents or governors.

Separately, Ofsted inspectors have visited 15 Birmingham schools in the weeks after the allegations came to light.

Concerns were first raised last year after an anonymous letter emerged, outlining the alleged plot, dubbed "Operation Trojan Horse".

Wrong drugs used by wrong people in wrong places

Meow, meow……

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2934853/Meow-meow-drug-banned-from-midnight.html

Child abuse, satanic ritual, paedophile scandals

Despite recent trials, most child abuse takes place in the home

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27600141

Media sex and violence

Not just in the UK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbZsx7dJ5eQ

Welfare cheats, single mothers

• Speaking at the launch of the local election campaign in Derbyshire the prime minister said his party ‘cares about the strivers, the battlers, the family-raisers, the community-builders’.

• He said Britain under Labour ‘was an age of absurdity, when everything was turned upside down’.

• Mr Cameron added: ‘Where some people were paid more to stay at home than to go to work. Where police spent more time filling in forms than on the beat. And where the solution to debt was debt, debt and more debt.’

Refugees and asylum seekers: flooding and swamping

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268952/Thousands-Bulgarians-Romanians-plan-flood-UK-2014-employment-restrictions-relax.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#axzz2Jg34Omcw

• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/crisis-as-colombian-refugees-flood-into-britain-1246486.html

Cohen identifies a process

A dispossessed or marginalised group + the media

“The Mods and Rockers didn’t become news because they were new, they were presented as new to justify their creation as new”

• concern: potential threat• consensus: something must be done• exaggerated claims: it’s the cause of...• volatility: it peaks and dissipates

It is also ridiculous, disproportionate

Pick Hoodies…..or drugs… or welfare…

• http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00444/news-graphics-2007-_444742a.jpg

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2220757/David-Cameron-PM-promises-seek-retribution-law-breakers-new-anti-crime-crackdown.html

Game: Bathos

• Each person makes a grandiose speech which they then scupper by adding a bathetic rider.

• EG: I have long needed to tell you that I am the victim of a monstrous crime. I have suffered, wept, gone through long nights of the soul and felt deeply ashamed. Yet I will rise again. Those who ate the chocolate I was saving for teatime will not escape.

For journalists, unpicking the words used can be helpful

• Let’s pick out one word “flood”• and measure it against some hard numbers• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-

2268952/Thousands-Bulgarians-Romanians-plan-flood-UK-2014-employment-restrictions-relax.html

• http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21602270-romanians-and-bulgarians-are-not-flocking-britain-no-flood-after-all

Definitions of the word alienAdj. 1. Belonging to a foreign country: an alien culture• 1.1(Of a plant or animal species) introduced from another country

and later naturalized:many food chains are based upon alien plants• 2 Unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful principles: that are alien

to them: they found the world of further education a little alien• 3 Supposedly from another world; extraterrestrial; alien beings an

alien spacecraftNoun 1 A foreigner, especially one who is not a naturalized citizen of

the country where he or she is living: an enemy• 1.1A plant or animal species originally introduced from another

country and later naturalized. • 2A hypothetical or fictional being from another world:she discovers

that the alien’s spaceship has • Middle English: via Old French from Latin alienus 'belonging to

another', from alius 'other'.

Where did your grandparents come from?

One way to counter moral panics is to front them with facts

History of immigration to UK

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/short_history_of_immigration.stm

another is political action

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/478751/EXCLUSIVE-Romania-launches-ad-campaign-against-Ukip-after-European-election-success

But that can backfire

• http://www.ukip.org/splash?splash=1

I prefer humour

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n-UGQcG3Jw

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE