“Viewer discretion is advised” : A thesis on media, power and moral panics

Sweden. 1980. The term ‘video violence’ becomes public through the debates show Studio S. The show urges and obligates politicians to stop, regulate and ban video films with violent content from the market. 29 years later, the debates show Debatt raises concerns regarding a similar topic, ‘video game violence’. Both shows were produced and aired by the Public Service channels of Sveriges Television in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis was to study and examine if the media encourages and nourishes moral panics to the general public through debates shows. How does the host/journalist interact to steer the debate to the media agenda and how has the power structure changed in the debate genre over the years? Do the media nurture the root of moral panics? We based the study on a qualitative content analysis. We analyzed one episode from each of the two debate shows Studio S and Debatt. The method of analysis we used was discourse analysis with emphasis on relations and power structures. We also analyzed the episodes by using Goode and Ben-Yehudas five criteria’s for creating moral panic. The study shows that both debates shows fail to mention the problem in a larger societal context. They tend to only portray a scapegoat. Furthermore, they often show one-sided and violent sequences from the cultural phenomena. They use discourses to maintain the firm power in the debates to fulfill their pre-constructed bias agenda. We’ve also observed that it has become much more difficult for a moral panic to gain momentum compared with 1980, because of the medias decentralization