Media, Government and Moral Panic: the politics of paedophilia in Britain 2000-1

Abstract

Following the murder of an eight-year-old girl in July 2000, a British newspaper, the News of the World , campaigned to change the law on paedophile crimes. Most of its demands were eventually met. The narrative has four episodes: the initial campaign, popular vigilantism, political response and further debate and action following the murderer's conviction. A moral panic framework is shown to be applicable but ultimately an inadequate explanatory framework, having too rigid a conception of the state, primary definers and the control culture. Supplementary approaches from agenda setting and discourse analysis are needed. The distortion of the issues of child abuse and murder suggests a need for reconceptualisation of moral panics in terms of three dimensions: processes, discourses and normative affirmation.