Abstract
This article aims to further develop the understanding of the relationship and distinction between moral panics and moral regulation. To this end, a model for the comparative analysis of discursive changes over time, and between different discursive fields, is outlined. The model consists of three steps: (1) mapping general trends in news reporting; (2) analysing thematical relations in full-text news articles; and (3) conducting closer qualitative readings of news articles indicated to be of specific importance in the first two steps. Results from the presented case study – in which news reporting on benefit fraud in Sweden and the United Kingdom is analysed using the outlined model – suggest that there is a close relationship between moral panic discourse and moral regulation discourse. Using different strategies to construct social relations and deviant subjectivities through moralizing articulations, momentary outbursts of moral panics, and the more common, routine, forms of moral regulation, draw and depend upon each other to organize consensus and the management of risks in processes of discursive legitimization.
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