Stop these aliens! Teaching the theory of moral panic to first year BA Journalism students

1. Stop these aliens!Teaching the theory of moral panic to first year BA Journalism students Victoria Neumark Jones Associate professor, London Metropolitan University

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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…….

5. 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%

6. Pedagogic rationale • Employability: social skills, quickness, analysis, expressiveness • Use of playfulness in education: ludicity • Learning through doing • Students get bored • So do I

7. 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).

8. 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

9. Cohen unpicked the mods and rockers in seaside towns in …1960s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lw86RK8-c

10. 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…..

11. Scapegoating • Think of a time you’ve been blamed for something you didn’t do. Why did that happen? • Thrown out into the wilderness

12. Deviants: Not like us What would you never do? Work in pairs. The idea of leaving a path

13. Labelling This?

14. Or this?

15. Fat-shaming, slut-shaming, body-shaming: Can we make our own gallery of folk devils?

16. Cohen identifies seven types liable to be identified as folk devils

17. Young, working class violent males Chavs: Owen Jones on the riots

18. School violence, bullies, shoot-outs Remember this recent story Trojan Horse: Birmingham schools 'plot' probe widened 14 April 2014 Last updated at 21:29 BST An 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".

19. 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

20. 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

21. Media sex and violence Not just in the UK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbZsx7dJ5eQ

22. 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.’

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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.

27. 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

28. Definitions of the word alien Adj. 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 spacecraft Noun 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'.

29. Where did your grandparents come from?

30. 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

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

32. But that can backfire • http://www.ukip.org/splash?splash=1

33. I prefer humour • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n-UGQcG3Jw • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE