Media’s made criminality: the construction of moral panic over gypsies and immigrants

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the discourses provided in the Portuguese daily newspapers when covering criminality perpetrated by immigrants and minority ethnic groups. The aim is to understand how the narratives circulated in the press convey visions about social order which promote consensus and social control through the overemphasis on risk of victimization and the construction of so-called 'moral panic'. The media coverage of crime produces widely shared visions and consensus in different communities, while feeding, in general public, stereotypes about the "criminals", and linking the crime to socially excluded groups and ethnic minorities, such as gypsies and immigrants. These stereotypes can convert these groups as potential threats to the prevailing interests and values of society, by producing a moral crusade that, through the disproportionate and excessive emotional reaction that awakens audiences, represents the spokesmen of morality and their diagnoses and solutions. This paper discusses the Portuguese press coverage of criminality perpetrated by gypsies and immigrants as a paradigmatic example of a product of a cultural industry. These media narratives are nourished by global logics of commodification of the public sphere based on criminalization of poverty and the fear of ‘troublesome’ populations, whose purpose is to raise emotional attachment by the public and thus leading to moral crusades.