Moral panics: requiem for a concept or new revival?

Authors

  • Céline Mavrot Institut des sciences sociales, Université de Lausanne, Suisse.
  • Cédric Passard CERAPS-CNRS, Sciences Po Lille.
  • Grégoire Lits Observatoire de recherche sur les médias et le journalisme, ORM-ILC, Université catholique de Louvain.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14428/emulations.041.01

Keywords:

moral panic

Abstract

This thematic issue finds its origin in the paradoxical success of the expression "moral panic" which saturates the media space, but whose elastic uses allow for the most diverse appropriations. As with other concepts at the crossroads of the scientific and political-media fields (populism, conspiracy, etc.), the vagueness surrounding these uses and the multiple recuperations of which this concept is the object raise questions about its nature, its heuristic interest, and the conditions of its scientific use. This issue therefore proposes to take a reflective look at the question of moral panics.

Author Biographies

Céline Mavrot, Institut des sciences sociales, Université de Lausanne, Suisse.

Céline Mavrot is an assistant professor in health systems governance at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne. After obtaining her PhD at the University of Bern in 2017, she was a visiting scholar at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Yale University School of Public Health in 2020-2021. Her work focuses on comparative political analysis, public policy evaluation, and the sociology of public problems and public health controversies.

Cédric Passard, CERAPS-CNRS, Sciences Po Lille.

Cédric Passard is a lecturer in political science at Sciences Po Lille and a researcher at CERAPS-CERAPS. His work mainly concerns the intellectual history and socio-history of political ideas, the sociology of literature and symbolic goods, and political discourse. He is the author of L'âge d'or du pamphlet. 1868-1898 (CNRS Éditions, 2015), a book based on his thesis defended in 2013. He recently co-edited "Politique(s) des dystopies" (Quaderni, n° 102, 2021/1), De quoi se moque-t-on? Satire and freedom of expression (CNRS Éditions, 2021) and Le porte-parole. Fondements et métamorphoses d'un rôle politique (Presses du Septentrion, 2022).

Grégoire Lits, Observatoire de recherche sur les médias et le journalisme, ORM-ILC, Université catholique de Louvain.

Grégoire Lits is assistant professor at the School of Communication of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and co-director of the Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism (ORM). He holds a PhD in sociology from UCLouvain and has been a visiting researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of British Columbia and the University of Aarhus. His research lies at the crossroads of the sociology of social problems, the sociology of media and the analysis of controversies related to digital and environmental technologies.

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Published

2022-06-20

How to Cite

Mavrot, C., Passard, C. and Lits, G. (2022) “Moral panics: requiem for a concept or new revival?”, Emulations - Revue de sciences sociales, (41), pp. 7–26. doi: 10.14428/emulations.041.01.

Issue

No. 41 (2022): Moral panics. 50 years after Stanley Cohen

Section

Editorial

License

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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