Читать книгу Contemporary Health Studies - Louise Warwick-Booth - Страница 67

Mass media and lay network discourses have sought to raise moral panic about several different health threats. Moral panic can be thought of as anxiety and fear generated by moral judgements about people and behaviour that poses risks to social order.

For example, Accoron and Watson (2006) discuss moral panics related to HIV, conceptualized as retribution and a plague on individuals who engage in ‘deviant’ behaviour. For example, in the US the ‘4-H risk groups’ were initially used to describe at-risk groups, namely homosexuals, Haitians, haemophiliacs and heroin addicts. A further classification identified different groups of individuals as either guilty or innocent (i.e. haemophiliacs and children respectively). This moral panic is especially prevalent in evangelical communities when minority groups have been blamed for society’s ills and used to create a ‘climate of fear’ that somehow society will break down if the threat is not countered. The implications of this moral panic are huge, leading to further stigmatization of vulnerable people and increasing barriers for practitioners lobbying for less victim-blaming approaches and more open policies for tackling HIV.

Luce (2013) discusses media-related moral panics about suicides among young people. During January 2008, in Bridgend (Wales), media attention focused upon a spate of suicides in the region. The media attention started off locally, then moved to national and eventually international coverage. There had been 20 suicides over a 6-month period among young people aged 15–29. Media reports sensationalized the story, incorrectly linking the cases, discussing membership of social media as a factor and demonizing those who had taken their own lives, as well as framing the problem in a stereotypical manner.

Science has also been blamed for playing a role in the generation of fear and heightened perceptions of risk because many studies are methodologically flawed but this is not recognized, despite the findings often being used as the basis of both media (mis)reporting and government campaigns. Consequently, people often have higher levels of fear than are necessary (Buckingham, 2009), and hold misperceptions about potential risks (Duffy, 2019). Even when research is dismissed by a large number of scientists, as in the case of the study claiming to find an association between the MMR vaccination and childhood autism, the conflicting views discussed by experts were enough for many members of the public to see a threat (Burgess, 2009) and to change their behaviour, for example by refusing vaccinations. This was due to the perceptions of bad science being associated with the vaccination. It took time for the truth to emerge about the safety of the MMR, safety concerns still persist years later. More generally vaccination uptake remains a challenge, with measles no longer eradicated in the UK because herd immunity is compromised as a result of vaccine hesitancy (Kennedy, 2019). Now complete learning task 2.3. This will help you to think about how the UK media influences perceptions of risk.