A word for this?

Tim Robbins

IS there a word for the pattern of the last ten years of the media whooping up fear about anything to do with children such that some people are paranoid and irrational about the safety of children?

Some examples.

1. Many parents go mad if someone sticks a photo of their child up on facebook? Why is this more risky than their child showing their face in public?

2. I was in Ikea once and a childs entertainer came out and starting doing fun stuff with kids for about twenties minutes. One parent took a photo of his kid and another parent went mad for him doing this because her kid was also in the shot.

Pretty crazy stuff.

The Corinthian

I believe the word is hysteria.

I think the term you're after is 'Moral Panic'. The exact origin of the phrase is unknown, but it's defined as an intense public reaction to a threat to societal and cultural norms. It is often used to describe the extreme concern societies feel during the threat of an epidemic like the swine 'flu panic a few years ago.

The threat causing the moral panic may be real or imagined. There was an intense moral panic noted in the mid to late 80's regarding Satanic child abuse after many allegations (mostly unproven) of such abuse were made and reported in the papers in the U.K. which caused several children to be taken from their families, who were later vindicated.

Moral panic regarding the safety of children is largely thought to have been promoted by newspapers, particularly in the last 20 years, the origins of which some cultural commentators trace back to the intense feelings the Jamie Bulger case stirred in the public psyche.

Amirani

Tim Robbins wrote: »

1. Many parents go mad if someone sticks a photo of their child up on facebook? Why is this more risky than their child showing their face in public?

Some people have perfectly legitimate concerns about facebook, the data they possess about people and what they do with that data.

hames

It is a form of appeal to emotion, which renders it a logical fallacy

Wikipedia (forgive the source) has a page on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_interests_(rhetoric)

Citing the interests of children can be used to justify why something should, or should not, be done. When used as a plea for pity, this appeal to emotion can constitutes a potential logical fallacy, while when used as an appeal for sympathy for weaker members of society, or the social good of the long-term health and viability of a society, it can constitute an argument for social justice generally accepted as appropriate.

It doesn't have an official title, but you might call it The "won't-somebody-think-of-the-children" Fallacy.

Peregrinus

It's not confined to child-related issues. From time to time you get similar waves of hysteria about burglaries, or immigration, or whatever.

And, while it's convenient (and usually justified) to blame the media, typically the media are only intensifying prejudices or irrational fears that are latent anyway, and others may be involved in intensifying them too - e.g. politicians, occasionally interest groups.

The Corinthian

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's not confined to child-related issues. From time to time you get similar waves of hysteria about burglaries, or immigration, or whatever.

Indeed. The hysteria surrounding this was best described as moral panic, by Candie, earlier. Children's interests may be the underlying justification for it, but the phenomenon has been around for a long time, whether it targets paedophiles, communists ('reds under the bed') or witches - that the term witch hunt is often used in relation to such phenomena can be said to demonstrate this.

And, while it's convenient (and usually justified) to blame the media, typically the media are only intensifying prejudices or irrational fears that are latent anyway, and others may be involved in intensifying them too - e.g. politicians, occasionally interest groups.

Under a free market, media seeks increased sales so as to maximize profits, so will tend to give the market what it wants.

However, this can lead to an amplification of such public hysteria - making the moral panic far greater than would have ordinarily been.

Also businesses don't always simply service existing demands, sometimes they can create them too - Apple being a good example of this - so I would not rule out that the media has not, at least in part, created the present moral panic surrounding paedophilia.