“I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer”: Crime,liquor theft,and online fantasies of punishment and control

Abstract

In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what news media described as “brazen” liquor store theft. Online discussion and social media platforms provided segments of the public with opportunities to assert claims about the causes and consequences of this putative crime wave as well as potential solutions within and outside the penal system. These online fora allowed internet communities to imagine new methods of crime control and vocalize a range of emotions about crime and punishment. Employing a thematic analysis of reader comments across several online and social media platforms, we argue that these online discussions about liquor theft provide an empirical case study of the new digital media logic that facilitates highly volatile and short-lived moral panics or “firestorms.” We draw upon cultural criminology scholarship to highlight the centrality of emotion in online discussions on liquor theft. By making emotion central, online discussions provide a clearer glimpse into the displaced rage that is thought to set moral panics in motion. We argue that online platforms constitute an important medium to understand how people imagine and envision punishment and control, as well as how they construct/conceive of offenders and the purported problems underlying crime.

Keywords

Crime control emotion liquor theft moral panic online firestorm

Introduction

In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news coverage in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) about alcohol theft from government-run liquor stores (Kohm and Maier, 2023). Reportedly, individuals entered these stores, quickly filled their bags with liquor, and fled, unimpeded by security or liquor store staff. Media attention peaked in November 2019 when a 15-year-old Indigenous male committed a violent attack at a liquor store in a Winnipeg suburb (the Tyndall Park incident). The events of this day were replayed across local media outlets nearly daily for several weeks. The emotional toll for Tyndall Park employees and bystanders became a focal point in local reporting, adding urgency to discussions about the causes and responses needed to stop this “Manitoba crisis” (CBC Manitoba, Oct 30, 2019; Grabish, 2019; see also Kohm and Maier 2023). At the time, Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Cooperation (MLLC), the provincial Crown cooperation responsible for the sale of liquor and gambling in Manitoba, reported a monthly average of 1700 thefts and 35 robberies¹ from liquor stores across the province (Lefebvre, 2021). Shortly after the Tyndall Park incident, by early 2020, media attention had all but disappeared. However, visible “traces” of liquor store theft have remained; following the Tyndall Park incident, controlled entrances were installed at most Winnipeg liquor stores, and customers are now required to have their photo IDs electronically scanned before entering.

Liquor store theft generated significant media attention; 147 individual news stories were published between January 2018 and January 2021, with the vast majority (92.4%) between September 2018 and December 2019 (see Kohm and Maier 2023). Discussions about liquor store theft spread quickly to social media platforms and local news media online comment sections. Providing large numbers of people opportunity for vernacular discourse and content production, scholars have identified digital platforms as critical sites for understanding the construction of social problems (e.g. Walsh, 2020). Hier (2019) calls on scholars to examine how “digitally mediated interactions are enabling diverse users to actively and passively participate in a range of organic, lateral, hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic claims making activities, moralizing campaigns, and righteous crusades” (p. 387). Heeding this call, we thematically analyze 1119 individual comments across online news comment and social media sites (CBC News Comments, Reddit, and Facebook) between March and November 2019 to examine how individuals vocalize emotions and imagine new methods of crime control and punishment in response to what the media was calling a liquor store theft “crisis.” We argue that online platforms constitute an important medium to examine how people understand and imagine crime and crime control, as well as how they construct/conceive of offenders through fantasies about punishment and violent vigilantism (see also Flores-Yeffal et al., 2017; Lageson, 2020; Lageson and Maruna, 2018; Lane, 2018; Stuart, 2020).

We note that online users’ opinions do not represent those of the larger public as existing research shows that people who participate in online discussions are driven by specific motivations, such as a moral compass, quest for social recognition, and desired sense of belonging and collective identity, which have the potential to shape their opinions in particular ways (Gruber et al., 2020; Johnen et al., 2018). In other words, people who deliberately choose to share their beliefs with others in online fora, may present unique views as they may feel more concerned or emotional about the respective issue and/or disgruntled with the state of society than others, or because they may seek belonging to an “imagined community” (see Gruber et al. 2020). While not representative of the larger population, the internet has been established as a widely accessible space for people to express and exchange ideas with a large number of others (see also Flores-Yeffal et al., 2017); as such, online user comments present an important window into how (segments of) the public understand and narrate social problems. Online discussions have also been shown to influence broader societal discussions and even collective action beyond the immediate reach of direct online users (Obar et al., 2012); thus, these fora present an important outlet through which we can understand some of the sentiments surrounding liquor store theft.

We approach our study of digital public discourse about liquor store theft as a type of “online firestorm” (Hier, 2019) that emerged in the context of a wider mediated moral panic about liquor theft (see Kohm and Maier 2023). While the issue of liquor theft simmered in local Winnipeg media for a longer period than generally envisioned in prior research on online firestorms (Johnen et al., 2018), we show that this concept provides an apt conceptual model to make sense of several shorter bursts of online moral outrage that flared up during the course of the wider mass-mediated moral panic. Specifically, our findings reveal three prominent themes that fed into, though at time also challenged, the online firestorm about liquor store theft in Winnipeg: (1) blame for the breakdown of law-and-order; (2) solutions and the punitive imagination; and (3) race, racism and colonialism. Online discussions revealed a broad desire for renewed law and order, including the right to self-arm and access other social control measures, rooted in emotionally laden discussions about the failures of Canada’s criminal justice system and broader society. We draw upon cultural criminology scholarship to highlight the centrality of emotion in online discussions on liquor theft, specifically the range and indignation that we argue spurred users’ penal fantasies. Furthermore, we show that while some discussion threads highlighted cultural and racial tropes, others revealed some competing narratives, with some commenters using liquor store theft as a “hook” to imagine alternative ways of addressing crime and its underlying social problems. Overall, we demonstrate how these online discussions shaped a penal imaginary and gave voice to a broader sense of frustration by focusing on an otherwise mundane form of property crime.

Online firestorms and moral panics

In the conventional (orthodox, paradigmatic, see Hier, 2023) moral panic model, a specific episode, condition, person or group is perceived to threaten society, leading to stigmatization, criminalization, deviancy amplification, and/or heightened public concern (Cohen, 2002; see also Critcher, 2008; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994; Young, 2009). In this conventional view, moral panics are built upon an apparent public consensus (Hall et al., 2013) and are fueled by disproportionate, alarmist, and sensationalized claims by political figures, the media, and the broader public (Hawdon, 2001). Conventional moral panics center on folk devils who are scapegoats for other sublimated anxieties—the displaced source of moral disturbance (Garland, 2008; Hier, 2008).

While a full review of theoretical developments in moral panic studies is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth emphasizing several key currents in this literature. Scholars have critiqued the moral panic concept over the past three decades, variously extending (e.g. Rohloff, 2011), widening (e.g. Critcher, 2009) or tightening (e.g. Hier, 2011) its focus, while rethinking the role of folk devils (e.g. Hier et al., 2011; Ungar, 2001). Scholars have debated the disproportionate quality of societal reaction (e.g. Garland, 2008; Young, 2009) and have considered the existence of “good” moral panics (e.g. Cohen, 2011; Hier, 2017). Hier (2023) has outlined two broad streams of critical scholarship: the first, a set of deconstructionist studies, exemplified by McRobbie and Thornton’s (1995) call for scholars to rethink moral panics and folk devils in light of shifts in analogue media; and the second, a set of revisionist contributions that seek to rework the moral panic concept by incorporating insights from complimentary fields, such as moral regulation and risk society (Hier, 2008, 2011; Ungar, 2001). The conventional view of moral panics as sporadic, irrational, and disproportionate reactions to typically relatively harmless behaviors has been challenged as the normative value judgments of scholars seeking to critique conservative approaches to crime control (Hier, 2008). Moreover, the orthodox model is unable to grapple with “post-conventional problems and concerns” (Hier, 2023: 370), such as the way digital media logic has re-shaped the nature and emergence of moral disturbances (see Hier, 2019; van Dijck and Poell, 2013). The “fast twitch” nature of the internet means public engagement happens more quickly and more often (see also Hayward, 2012), making it necessary “[. . .] to rethink some of the ways that moral panics are being cultivated in digitally (rather than only multi-) mediated social worlds” (Hier, 2019: 380).

“Online firestorms” have been analyzed as a type of moral panic that emerges and fosters in digital realms. Defined as a “sudden discharge of large quantities of messages containing negative word-of-mouth and complaint behaviour against a person, company, or group in social media networks” (Pfeffer et al., 2014: 118), firestorms frequently involve intense indignation, though they can also involve positive emotions. Online firestorms have some unique qualities (as compared to news media generated panics) insofar as the speed and unrestrained flow of information online, (alleged) lack of opinion diversity, and network-triggered decision processes help to foster and “speed up” firestorms (Pfeffer et al., 2014: 120–123; see also Berger and Milkman, 2012; Johnen et al., 2018; Lindenmeier et al., 2012; Rost et al., 2016). Like conventional moral panics, concerns shared by online participants may be exaggerated. Intense hostility and indignation toward the targets of online firestorms occurs within a short time period, facilitated by social network sites (SNSs) enabling users to connect with large groups of like-minded people. Participation in firestorms is thought to be motivated by a desire to defend one’s moral values against transgression, and a desire for recognition, particularly because the reactions of other users are visible (Johnen et al., 2018). Seeking recognition, or “virtue signaling” (Johnen et al., 2018: 3144) by condemning the moral transgressions of others aligns with Young’s (2009: 10) observations about ressentiment and the process of “othering” in moral panics. Online firestorm can ensue in the context of conventional news media attention (as is the case in our empirical case study) but they can also happen on their own (e.g. in response to a particular event or condition that the public may deem harmful or deviant). Digital firestorms can also trigger mass mediated moral panics, such as when media contextualize and report on firestorm-generated issues (see Hess and Waller, 2014). In short, the “interplay between new and old media” (Hess and Waller, 2014: 2) is dynamic, complex, and varied.

To date, most analyzes of online firestorms have been carried out by marketing and communication scholars (e.g. Delgado-Ballester et al., 2021; Hansen et al., 2018; Petrescu et al., 2020; Pfeffer et al., 2014). Criminologists have so far paid little attention to online firestorms as digitally facilitated moral disturbances, and their role in the production of punitive narratives. The intensity and relatively bounded nature of our study of liquor store theft in Winnipeg makes the online firestorm a useful framework to analyze public imagination/fantasies of punishment and associated emotions in the context of digital discussions about a putative crisis of law and order.

Pleasures and fantasies of punishment

Cultural criminologists understand penal institutions and processes as being created out of complex human interaction and contested meaning (Hayward, 2010; Hayward and Presdee, 2010; Presdee, 2000; see also Ferrell et al. 2015; Kohm 2009). While conventional criminology focuses on a narrow range of emotions thought to arise from crime—such as fear—cultural criminologists examine the full spectrum of emotions bound up within transgression, crime, and punishment. Building from Katz (1988) and focused on the “existential ‘foreground’ of crime” (Hayward, 2016: 299), cultural criminology explores boredom, excitement, and pleasure (Ferrell, 2004; Mercan, 2020; Steinmetz et al., 2017); shame and humiliation (Kohm 2009; Barton & Davis, 2018; Pratt, 2000; Presdee, 2000); and outrage (Coulling and Johnston, 2018). And while conventional criminology tends to reduce the complex emotions accompanying punishment to abstract constructs like “punitivity” (e.g. Dowler, 2003), cultural criminology instead places visceral emotions such as “desperation, anger, [and] rage” (Rafter and Brown, 2011: 5) at the forefront of analysis. These intense emotions also played out in the online firestorm about liquor theft in Winnipeg.

Brown (2009, 2013) uses the term “penal spectator” to analyze how ordinary citizens imagine and attribute meanings to punishment, thereby becoming complicit in punishment. Via media, cultural representations, and informal discourses, people make decisions about the meanings of punishment, and the role of pain, exclusion, and control in society. The penal spectator’s relationship to punishment is fundamentally characterized by an “experiential distance” which shields them from the core feature of punishment—the infliction of pain. As a result, the penal spectator’s “imagining of punishment is haunted by abstract potentialities of danger and insecurity against surprisingly rigid logics of retribution, making spectators a cultural agent and formidable force in the construction of pain” (Brown, 2013: 109). Though removed from the pains of punishment, the “penal spectator” is a central figure in shaping how punishment is envisioned, naturalized, and justified in society. We argue that these dynamics play out during online firestorms when online users imagine new modes of punishment and infliction of pain and take on the role of agents in digitally mediated panics.

As “penal spectators,” individuals may propose new solutions for crime and may even imagine penal fantasies which Dudai (2018) argues “provide a safety valve for feelings of frustration and powerlessness, an outlet for expressing outrage at perpetrators and solidarity with victims” (p. 876). Penal fantasies can be understood as a type of revenge fantasy, imbued with a range of associated positive and negative emotions:

Such fantasies arise from rage and hatred toward adversaries, as well as anxiety and self-disgust over allowing vulnerability, which lead to thoughts of vengeance. These thoughts have compensatory functions and often positive effects, including feeling good with a restored sense of control and power instead of a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, and pleasure at imagining the suffering of the other and being on the side of some primal justice. (Dudai, 2018: 875)

Therefore, paying attention to how the public imagines and envisions punishment provides insight into the complex emotive elements bound up in punishment (e.g. Presdee, 2000; Kohm 2009; see also Hess and Waller, 2014). While pre-modern spectacles of punishment offered opportunities for the public to delight in the infliction of pain upon others (Elias et al., 2000), the onset of the civilizing process rendered these pleasurable associations shameful just as punishment itself became invisible and relegated to “the realm of cultural imaginary” (Hörnqvist, 2021: 18). However, late modern capitalism and new forms of digital participatory media (e.g. reality TV, social media) re-center emotions in criminal justice, conferring pleasure, entertainment and cathartic forms of public expression directed toward individuals and groups deemed outsiders to the imagined community (Pratt 2000; Presdee, 2000; Vitis and Gilmour, 2017). The criminalized other has become not only an object of fear, but also a blank screen upon which to project generalized late modern anxieties and insecurities, as well as fantasies about punishment and violence (Garland, 2001, 2008), as we demonstrate below in our analysis of an online firestorm about liquor theft in Winnipeg. Interrogating what Werth (2023) calls the “penal imaginary” allows us to analyze “the socially patterned and often pre-reflexive ways in which people amalgamate empirical observation, assumption and imagination” (p. 8).

Methods

We qualitatively analyzed online user comments across one news and two social media outlets: CBC Manitoba (reader comments section), Reddit, and Facebook (two social media sites). We first collected news items on liquor store theft published between January 2018 to January 2021 across Winnipeg media outlets (CBC Manitoba, Global News Winnipeg, CTV News Winnipeg, Canadian Dimension, The Manitoban, Winnipeg Free Press, and Winnipeg Sun; see Kohm and Maier 2023). Given our interest in examining public responses to liquor store theft, we collected reader comments in response to CBC Manitoba news stories on liquor theft. CBC Manitoba is the only local news outlet that permits readers to post comments and replies to other comments in a moderated forum. In total, 21 of the 43 CBC Manitoba news stories had comment sections activated, resulting in a total of 1862 reader comments.

We also compiled user comments from two SNSs: Facebook and Reddit.² SNSs are used widely post, comment about, and react to news or other content. For qualitative scholars in particular, SNSs offer a medium to learn about how individuals see and understand the world (Andreotta et al., 2019: 1767). Reddit and Facebook are among the two most widely used SNSs globally, with over 430 million monthly users and 2.9 billion monthly users respectively. SNSs are regularly used by 9 in 10 Canadians aged 15 to 34; 8 in 10 aged 35 to 49; and 6 in 10 aged 50 to 64 (Schimmele et al., 2021). Facebook remains the most widely used platform in Canada, with Reddit as the seventh most used platform. Though not used as widely as other sites, Reddit’s function as a news aggregation and discussion website makes it an important platform for understanding public discourses and responses to news media stories and depictions of crime (Kennedy, 2017; LaChance and Kaplan, 2020). Our keyword search on Facebook generated only one discussion in response to a news article published by CBC News (Fed up with “brazen” liquor mart thefts, employees’ union wants security, safety improved, 9/18/2019), which generated 73 comments. Reddit users made the largest number of comments, amounting to 2645 in response to 39 local news stories. Combined with the 1862 comments from CBC News, our search of online discussion yielded a total of 4604 individual comments.

We employed a purposive and theoretical sampling strategy to capture discussions at key points in the development of the lifespan of the liquor store issue, selecting a subset of comments from each online source. We selected three heavily commented CBC Manitoba stories occurring at different time periods.³ The first story, published in March 2019, outlines new in-house security measures implemented in response to liquor theft (CBC News, 3/21/2019). The second story, published in September 2019, focuses on enhancing security guards’ legal powers and stationing police officers at every liquor store. The last story focuses on the Tyndall Park incident at the peak of media attention in late November 2019.

In total, 588 CBC news comments were selected for analysis, representing approximately one third of all comments on that news outlet during the study timeframe. We utilized a similar sampling approach for Reddit, selecting the three most heavily commented threads, totaling 458 comments. Because there were so few Facebook comments, we analyzed all of them. In sum, we analyzed 588 CBC News comments, 458 Reddit comments, and 73 Facebook comments, for a grand total of 1119 coded comments (nearly one quarter of all comments).

A qualitative and thematic approach was used to analyze and organize the whole dataset (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Each comment was coded based on what we assessed to be its primary and secondary focus; the perceived causes of liquor store theft; and claims regarding proposed responses to liquor store theft. We also coded claims made by commenters linking to other social issues, such as drugs and poverty, and we took note of any discussions of race, gender, and age. Our analysis also assessed the interactive dynamics and flow between user comments (Andreotta et al., 2019). Specifically, we focused on specific sub-groups of comments/sub-threads where users engaged in focused discussion on specific issues, such as the promises and pitfalls of heightened security at liquor stores. These conversational exchanges afforded particularly valuable insight into user claims and counterclaims on specific issues. Coding was carried out collaboratively by the authors and a graduate student research assistant.

Findings

Our analysis revealed several prominent themes: First, we focus on user discussions of who was to “blame” for liquor store theft. Second, we focus on commenters’ views on crime control, showing how some comment threads highlighted the merits of environmental and situational crime prevention, while others gave voice to highly emotive fantasies of punishment involving both state and non-state actors. The Tyndall Park liquor store robbery in particular fostered hostility and indignation on social media, leading users to comment widely on perceived failures of the court system, the putative causes of crime, and the need for tougher formal punishments as well as access to violent extra-legal measures. Third, we highlight online discussions around race and racism in the context of commenters’ discussions about the causes of liquor theft.

Allocating blame: Responsibility for crime and the break-down of law-and-order

Soon after being identified as a concerning new crime issue, media attention quickly turned to allocating blame for liquor store theft in Winnipeg, and several blameworthy individuals and groups became a focal point for rage and indignation. In online discussions, targets for blame broadly emerged in a “foraging” process (Ungar, 2001) that sought identifiable folk devils responsible for the liquor theft problem. Online discussions allocated blame mostly to individuals (e.g. security guards, thieves and their families), which had the effect of blunting criticism of broader social issues, such as poverty and racism, that might have also contributed to the spree of liquor store thefts. Blame was also allocated to more “depersonalized threats” (Carlson, 2016: 6), such as liberal politics and lax criminal laws, which commenters claimed enabled these folk devils to engage in liquor theft without much or any legal consequence.

Blame the MLLC and private security guards

In the early days of the discovery of liquor store theft as a social problem, local police, as cited in news media, laid blame squarely on the MLLC, citing its failure to implement effective in-house security protocols. Online users quickly picked up and amplified this claim, with some commenters personally blaming the CEO of the MLLC: “What the fuck do your job, CEO John Stinson, you’re getting paid huge bucks do your job” (Reddit, 10/23/2019). Quickly, however, the perceived lack of effective and active in-house security focused on concerns about liquor store security guards’ lack of authority to intervene:

More teens just helping themselves to booze at an LC this is crazy, why are the security guards not allowed to stop them. (Facebook, 10/26/2019)

The lack of physical intervention by private security guards⁴ was criticized by commenters who described them as merely “for show”:

So let’s call them what they are, greeters who are paid to do . . . what again? Give us a warm feeling of being protected . . ., no wait, they can’t protect us because they cannot put hands on anyone. Give us someone to look at while standing in line maybe? (Reddit, 11/1/2019)

A security person in a store does not make me feel safe at all because I feel they won’t do anything. Most of them look like they would be too scared to get involved. They look like observers. (Reddit, 11/1/2019)

In Manitoba, private security guards are not permitted to carry firearms or other equipment (e.g. batons) and do not have legal authority to use force (Justice, n.d.). As the quotes reveal, security guards’ limited authority and, according to commenters, their limited ability to “protect” customers and keep them “safe” ignited public concerns, moral indignation, and personalized attacks. Not surprisingly, the lack of intervention by an unarmed security guard during the Tyndall Park incident became a focal point for public rage and blame. Many commenters personally berated the guard who was visible in CCTV footage of the event, apparently standing back during the assault of a female cashier rather than inserting himself into the violent melee:

I have to say the behavior of the security guard is reprehensible. I know these people don’t make much money, but if you’re going to stand there and do nothing while a female employee is brutally assaulted, then get a job in a different industry. Funny how ordinary bystanders without bulletproof vests show more guts than the rentacop. (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

In addition to security guards’ alleged inaction and unwillingness vis-a-vis a more “courageous” public, commenters believed that security’s inaction and lack of legal authority were symptoms of broader societal-level decline in civility and commitment to citizen safety:

Clearly the present security provisions are totally failing. This failure is a failure to protect innocent people and signals a breakdown in law and order. It requires a far stronger response to reassure law abiding citizens that the government is not just going to sit back and let criminal gangs do as they please. (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

Simple solution start training and arming store clerks. It won’t be too long before enough of these punks are put into the hospital and then it will stop. (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

Commenters linked security officers’ inaction to their legal lack of force, leading many to conclude that arming these officers would be an obvious solution to “stop” the problem (see further below). To commenters, current security protocols and the laws constricting security guards’ authority indicated a broader failure of our justice system and government unwillingness to protect “innocent people.”

Blame liberal and soft-on-crime politics

While security guards provided a tangible symbol of the alleged decline of law-and-order and commitment to public safety, other comment threads focused on a more abstract target of blame: liberal politics and soft-on-crime policies and laws deemed to favor “criminals” over “law-abiding citizens.”

Ok, so the Liberals don’t want to get tough on crime, this is what we get. According to [Prime Minister] Trudeau, there are ‘better ways’ to reform these people rather than prison. Clearly his idea of reform is worse punishment for citizens who try and stop the crimes than the criminals themselves. Sickening. (Reddit, 10/23/2019)

Lax punishment and soft criminal laws were targets of blame throughout the entire period of liquor store theft and especially during coverage of the Tyndall Park incident, which involved a young offender: “Our laws protect him, but don’t protect us from him.” (CBC News, 11/21/2019). Many commenters echoed the sentiment that offenders had all the rights in the Canadian criminal law, and citizens who intervene to stop crimes in progress are more likely to suffer penal consequences than accused criminals. This was often characterized as an infringement on the right to exercise extra-legal violence in self-defense: “Anyone actually exercising their right to self defence in this country gets dragged into court for years. The criminals have more rights than we do” (CBC News, 11/21/2019). In fact, the perception of lax laws as a result of liberal politics was blamed for an inevitable slide into vigilantism and lawlessness:

So 6 months in juvie or maybe just a warm hug and a slap on the wrist then back out to terrorize the city, people will begin to take the law into their own hands if something isn’t done and soon (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

IN Canada? hah you’re dreaming, you can’t even defend yourself in your own home without risking being put in jail just for defending your home. (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

Implicitly, comments denigrating Canada’s law as too liberal and soft on crime take as their frame of reference jurisdictions in the United States, viewed by commenters as more crime control oriented and favorable to armed citizens defending their homes and businesses (see below). These comments fed into a larger penal fantasy of “American-style, do-it-yourself” justice dispensed by private actors.

Blame the parents

Commenters frequently discussed poor parenting and lack of male role models as likely causes of liquor store thieves’ offending. While sometimes couched in progressive language and concern for the “underlying issues” of crime (Reddit, 11/20/2021), these comments tended to shift blame largely onto socially and economically disadvantaged families and communities. Like passive security guards, absent fathers, bad parents, and dysfunctional families were easy targets for blame and indignation:

The crazy way would for parents to have to have a license to have a child. But that wouldnt [sic.] work. Its a huge problem and i know this sounds bias but young women have to stop having babies with loser males. Its hard for that to happen when the young woman has never known a good male so she has no idea what one should be. Getting young females to have better self esteem. That way they dont [sic.] fall for the tricks of loser males. I dont [sic.] have an answer but i do see a common thread of crappy role models in and around the home. We need people to step up that are in and around these issues. (Reddit, 11/1/2019)

Where are the parents? My guess is that they are at home selling this stolen alcohol. Time to change the laws and charge them as adults cause they clearly know what they’re doing! (CBC News, 11/21/2019)

Despite some commenters couching their comments in progressive terms, these threads focused outrage on the parents as identifiable scapegoats. However, while parents attracted considerable blame, the young offenders themselves were thoroughly demonized and subject to expression of moral indignation by online commenters.

Blame the liquor thieves

Commenters focused indignation especially on the individuals accused of liquor theft, with the resentment and outrage directed toward young thieves frequently taking on a distinctly dehumanizing character. This discursive framing was then used to justify harsh and even violent treatment as a potential solution to the problem (see below). For example, one Redditor claimed monetary penalties would be ineffective:

For the people doing this - often penniless street scumbags - they are unfineable [sic.]. A fine is a deterrent to a decent person with a job who contributes to society. Trash like those who regularly rob liquor stores don’t care (Reddit 10/23/2019).

Online commenters referred to thieves using pejorative terms like “worthless scum” (Reddit 10/23/2019), “subhumans” (Reddit 11/20/2019), “punks” (Reddit, 11/21/2019), and “skumbags” (Reddit 10/23/2019). The demonizing/dehumanizing of “brazen” liquor store thieves provided justification to imagine the harshest of responses, exemplified by the comment below:

These criminals should be put down like the dogs they are. Innocent people are now the victims due to government and societal failure. The security and citizens should be armed, only way to truly protect yourself. (Reddit 11/20/2019)

The above comments resemble a process of “foraging” for folk devils (Ungar, 2001) whereby online commenters grappled for identifiable targets for blame in the form of both identifiable scapegoats and more depersonalized “threats,” such as liberal politics and a too lax penal system (see also Carlson, 2016). Yet, while broader perceived political and social failures were discussed, individuals were more frequently and vehemently targeted for blame, throughout the entire liquor store crime spree lifespan but especially in the aftermath of the Tyndall Park incident, which often shaded into violent penal fantasies of retribution.

Solutions and the punitive imagination

Speculation about potential solutions to liquor store theft formed a recurrent theme within much of the online discussion during the firestorm—a feature common to traditional news mediated moral panics: “The allocation of blame and harm shape which solutions are seen as viable and appropriate” (Carlson, 2016: 15). Mirroring Garland’s (2001) discussion of the two competing impulses within the late modern culture of crime control, what he terms the “criminology of the self” versus the “criminology of the other,” proposed solutions generally fell into two types: (1) solutions focused on technical, opportunity-reduction strategies that make no distinction between law abiding customers and would-be thieves, and (2) solutions focusing on harsh legal and extra-legal denunciation of alleged thieves as a distinctly other group deserving of punishment and violence. Our findings show how both types of solutions can co-exist in the popular penal imaginary.

In house opportunity reduction solutions

Discussion of a wide range of in-house security solutions, including ID checks, bottle locks, controlled entrances, and liquor locked behind cabinets was common, particularly in the early period of the liquor theft issue. Many commenters supported these kinds of initiatives as simple, low-cost ways to address the problem. One commenter even provided a rational choice-based framing of these strategies, closely mirroring much of the crime prevention literature:

The typical MLCC robbery happens because of opportunity, low risk, and high reward. They can easily gain access to the store, they know nobody in the store is going to do anything or confront them, and they get to walk away with a bag full of booze that would have cost a few hundred bucks. The security entrance they are installing takes away the opportunity for them to even enter the store, preventing the mass theft and making it a whole lot less attractive . . . (Reddit 11/20/2019)

Other online users claimed opportunity-based strategies would only lead to crime displacement, and possibly escalation. Commenters worried that securing the store entrances and products would cause already motivated thieves to resort to violence and armed robberies of customers in the parking lot or streets outside liquor stores:

I wonder if this would cause an escalation to customers being robbed outside the store. Bad guys can’t get in, so they’ll wait for you to come out (Reddit 10/23/2019).

. . . and that’s the kind of society we want to live in. Where checkpoints stop the criminals, Leaving them free to roam the streets and assault customers for their liquor? The target of the violent robberies will change, nothing else. (CBC News Comment, 11/21/2019)

Users’ conceptions of liquor store thieves as aggressive and criminally adaptive individuals led many to conclude that opportunity reduction strategies would be ineffective. Accordingly, commenters debated not only who was to blame, but also the kinds of solutions necessary to stop liquor store theft. Many advocated for arming liquor store guards and/or “taking justice in their own hands” via extra-legal vigilante measures. Only a small number of commenters called for more police involvement, straying somewhat from media reports calling for increased formal police presence at liquor stores; instead, many believed there was a need for better trained private security with much more extensive powers to arrest and carry arms: “The police can’t possibly supply security for every liquor mart. The province needs to hire contracted private security companies that have the ability to arrest and detain thieves” (Reddit, 10/23/2019). Others were in favor of allowing individual citizens to carry concealed firearms, currently not possible in the Canadian legal context, but common in the United States and other national contexts:

Simple solution: armed guards with clear mandate to protect the staff with deadly force when their lives are threatened. Same with law abiding citizens with licensed permit to carry. Liquor store swarmings will stop pretty quick when the first few repeat offenders are dragged away in a bodybag (CBC 11/21/2019)

Comments dehumanizing liquor store thieves provided further rhetorical justification for the use of lethal violence: “Taze, bean bag the unarmed ones and shoot the armed ones. Its a very small portion of the populace doing this and they really wouldn’t be missed” (CBC 11/21/2019). Several commenters invited comparisons between Canada’s approach to extra-legal violence and other jurisdictions, like the U.S.: “In the USA the clerk would just shoot these robbers. The police would get a statement, shake their hands and let them go about their day. The way it should be” (CBC 11/21/2019). Of course, the popular penal imaginary is unconstrained by facts; thus, many erroneous and simplistic comparisons were offered to illustrate potential solutions for Winnipeg’s liquor theft problem. For example, one commenter suggested the violence was worse in Canada than Central America (CBC, 11/21/2019), while another suggested liquor stores are rarely robbed in the U.S. because of the right to self-arm:

I don’t think that you hear about too many liquor store robberies in the US as the owners there are generally armed. These punks are getting away with violent crimes in Canada because of the lack of any effective armed response . . .. (Reddit 11/21/2019)

Online discussion about armed responses to liquor theft sometimes extended to extra-legal and vigilante style violence. While some gleefully described putting down criminals like “dogs,” other commenters voiced reluctance but also a degree of resignation to taking up arms: “I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer” (CBC News, 11/22/2019). Online users’ proposed solutions largely aligned with moral panics insofar as many of the envisioned solutions (e.g. armed security guards, right to self-arm) represented calls for discipline and punishment of (would-be) thieves which “deepen the othering of folk devils” (Carlson, 2016: 6).

Race, racism and colonialism

Unsurprisingly, local news media coverage of liquor store theft in Winnipeg was notable for its absence of discussion of race or Indigeneity (see Kohm and Maier 2023). Aside from a few vague references that might mark an accused individual as Indigenous, nearly all local news reports presented the problem of brazen liquor theft in Winnipeg in race-neutral terms (see Kohm and Maier 2023). This stands in sharp contrast with the long, fraught colonial history of the Canadian criminal justice system, in which Indigenous peoples are criminalized and incarcerated at rates many times higher than non-Indigenous populations (e.g. Monchalin, 2016).

Conversely, online discussion of liquor theft more squarely addressed the issue in distinctly racialized terms. Unlike a traditional news-mediated moral panic and consistent with what Carlson (2016) calls a moral breach, online discussion of race did not present a clear consensus and was characterized by competing claims about race and crime. Moreover, much of the discussion online about race appeared to be carefully coded to obscure the content. For example, one commenter stated: “This type of casual everyday violence is hardly surprising to anybody who has spent time in Western Canada’s northern communities” (CBC 11/21/2019). While not overtly referring to race, the comment clearly implies violence is commonplace on Indigenous reserves, many of which are in northern parts of the Canadian prairie provinces. Similarly, a commenter wrote: “I am afraid to drive in Alberta, Sask., and Manitoba now for fear of being called a settler, and robbed or shot at” (CBC 11/21/2019). Another claimed: “Look at the makeup of the gangs in Winnipeg that are perpetuating these crimes and you’ll see the cause” (CBC 11/21/2019). More clearly linking Indigeneity and crime, one commenter wryly noted: “Mr. Gladue will set them free” (CBC News, 11/21/2019), referring to a landmark Canadian Supreme Court decision upholding provisions for sentencing Indigenous offenders.⁵

A few commenters expressed more overtly racist tropes about Indigenous peoples and crime. For example, one commenter claimed: “I am sure that stealing was an introductory course in Rez schools” (CBC 11/21/2019). These comments, coded or otherwise, single out Indigenous peoples as being more prone to violence and beyond the reach of the Canadian criminal law. Consequently, the problem of liquor theft in Winnipeg was associated with Indigeneity through social media framing during an online firestorm. As a result, blame for the putative crime wave was placed squarely on Indigenous peoples who were in turn demonized and dehumanized through online comments calling for a violent response.

At the same time, some commenters, on Reddit in particular, offered a more critical framing of racism and colonialism as a root of social problems facing the city. One commenter reframed the discussion around a legacy of historical colonialization:

We all know that our aboriginal [sic.] community is struggling with the long-term effects of colonization and the residential schools legacy. We need to continue to make meaningful efforts at reconciliation, and look for new ways of doing things that may be more expensive, but also more effective. (Reddit, 11/20/2019)

While characterizing the colonial foundation of Canada as a past injustice has been criticized for ignoring the fact the colonialism is an ongoing process (see for example Chartrand and Savarese, 2023), the above example still provides an alternative view of race counter to the overt and covert racist tropes of many other commenters. In the example below, another Redditor singles out the media for blame in whipping up a racially charged panic:

If journalists and politicians really care about dangers facing Winnipeggers, they would turn their attention to a lack of public housing, pedestrian deaths, and police violence itself. And if money is their primary concern, they could pay some mind to the province’s appalling low minimum wage, the fact a single family in Manitoba owns $6.6 billion in wealth, or the ever-increasing police budget that diverts funding away from public transit and community services. Until then, we can only conclude the media are consciously peddling in racist and classist fear mongering for clicks and votes (Reddit 11/01/2019).

Overall, both critical anti-colonial and racist framings constituted a prominent theme in the online discussion accompanying the firestorm around liquor store theft in Winnipeg. This is broadly consistent with Carlson’s (2016) findings about news-mediated “moral breaches,” where completing claims vie for media coverage. Indeed, in moral breaches, social problems afflicting communities, especially past injustices, are acknowledged. A small number of online comments about liquor theft in Winnipeg, thus, aligned with a moral breach, rather than moral panic, framing.

Discussion and conclusion

Drawing upon thematic analysis of 1119 social media and newspaper comment section posts, this paper examined internet users’ construction of and discursive engagement with liquor store theft during a period of intense media attention. Users’ online comments and conversation threads amplified the digitally mediated firestorm surrounding liquor store theft, by (a) attributing shame and stigma to identifiable groups, (b) linking liquor store theft to broader failures of the penal system and society, and (c) advocating for harsh and extra-legal punishments. Our findings reveal that the problem of liquor theft became largely personified in various individuals/actors (i.e. passive security guards, young and racialized individuals, lone parents) who were singled out as scapegoats for moral indignation. Although at times couched in “progressive” terms, blame for the social roots of crime fell disproportionately onto poor, racialized, and lone parent families. User comments form part of a continuum of blame that avoids serious engagement with the broader economic, colonial, and social roots crime in Canada and its Prairie region specifically.

We argue that digitally mediated user comments—in our case, those from an online firestorm surrounding liquor store theft—provide additional insight for understanding conventional mass mediated moral panics. In our case study, the online firestorm surrounding liquor store theft took place in the context of intensified mass media attention, with online users debating the issue in response to news media articles focused on the nature, causes, and responses to liquor theft. The internet is “ideal for watching waves of concern as it operates in real time” (Ungar, 2001: 280). Thus, rather than using mass media coverage as a surrogate for public concern in a moral panic, the internet can provide us with a more immediate forum to see whether an issue is “in the air” (Mazur, 1981) — whether there is in fact a public “wave of concern” and what this looks like (Ungar, 2001).

Our analysis of online user comments also provides insight into the nature of online firestorms as well as fodder for future research on how firestorms conceptually align with or differ from conventional moral panics. Our findings suggest that the online firestorm surrounding liquor theft had some unique features, spanning elements of both moral panic and moral breach (Carlson, 2016). Specifically, blame for liquor theft was largely assigned to identifiable groups (e.g. thieves, security guards) in line with moral panics; however, unlike conventional panics, the target of blame was debated and shifted during the firestorm’s duration, from passive security guards to aggressive thieves to lone parents. Unlike moral breaches, however, competing narratives within discussions about these different blameworthy individuals/groups were near non-existent. Some comments, such as about families and parenting, were couched in progressive terms, but largely eschewed any meaningful discussion about harms and injustices underlying crime and social issues (as is the case in moral breaches). Only a small number of comments aligned with moral breach by recognizing the past injustices (and to a lesser extent ongoing injustices) inflicted upon Indigenous communities. Overall, we demonstrate how online firestorms can encompass moral panic and breach elements and call for more empirical studies on the specific features of digital firestorms.

Hier (2023: 368) asserts that innovation in moral panic scholarship is limited due, in part, to lack of effective engagement with “emerging media systems” and so-called “cancel culture, fake news, [and] misinformation”—key aspects of the digital media logic underlying online firestorms. In the foregoing analysis, we engaged with digital media logic to show that online media platforms are critical venues for understanding public constructions and informal narratives, or fantasies, about crime and punishment. Echoing Lageson and Maruna’s (2018) argument that “the internet created a space for a partial return to the sort of public engagement in the punishment process” (p. 115), we call on scholars to consider digital media platforms and online firestorms as key sites to understanding punitive imaginaries and informal constructions of crime because “as socially patterned, deep-seated modes of understanding the social world, imaginaries do not merely represent the world, they shape how we perceive and make sense of it” (Werth, 2023: 15). We further argue that enhanced focus on informal constructions and dissemination of punishment serves to expand the current near hegemonic focus in penal scholarship on how formal institutions and actors (e.g. prisons, parole, police) engage in penal practices. Attention to digital media generated firestorms can provide insight into how ordinary citizens may contribute to fueling and deepening shame and stigma against targeted groups (see also Hess and Waller, 2014).

Indeed, our analysis points to an expansive conceptualization of penal spectatorship. Brown (2009, 2013) uses the term “penal spectator” to analyze how ordinary citizens without direct encounters and/or experiences with the penal system imagine and attribute meanings to punishment. Our study suggests a more “participatory” form of penal spectatorship, where ordinary people (who may or may not have had contact with the criminal justice system) actively construct and disseminate punitive ideas, fantasies, and solutions, rather than simply “watch” or passively consume punishment. In other words, digital media logics and practices enable the public to move from “penal spectators” to more active interlocutors who are more akin to “penal participants”—just as social media transforms audiences from users to “produsers” of information who are also capable of “inventing new forms of social regulation and control” (Hier, 2019: 386). While the effects of greater public engagement with crime and social issues can be positive (e.g. greater awareness of social issues), online platforms also give people “enormous labelling power [over others] . . . in ways not seen previously” (Lageson and Maruna, 2018: 114), which can result in harm, stigma, and exclusion of those targeted and labeled in online discourses.

We must reiterate that online users’ comments are not representative of the larger public; indeed, it is possible that online commenters’ views are unique and possibly exaggerated given their participation implies interest, commitment, and concern to a given issue. Thus, further research examining public sentiments and opinions as expressed in other fora/venues (e.g. neighborhood watch meetings; online groups) and using diverse methodologies (interviews, surveys) would help gain a fuller understanding of public responses to and engagement with putative crime issues.

Nonetheless, given the immense “labelling power” of digitally mediated user content, we call on scholars to study the effects of digitally mediated discourse surrounding crime and punishment on “the labelled” (Lageson and Maruna, 2018; see also Flores-Yeffal et al., 2017; Hess and Waller 2014). In this study, users put blame on identifiable groups, in particular young Indigenous people and their families, deemed at fault for liquor theft specifically and the decline of societal values and civility more broadly. Indigenous peoples have long been targets of state violence and intervention, being subjected to hyper-incarceration and policing (e.g. Comack et al., 2013 ; see also Brittain and Blackstock 2015). It is therefore no coincidence that young Indigenous people were objects of moral indignation and violent fantasies of retribution, for as Young (2009) points out “trigger groups are not chosen by accident” (p. 14). It is critical that scholars empirically investigate the stigmatizing and harmful effects of informal online discourses on racialized and marginalized communities, including how informal digital labeling practices may amplify formal punishment, revealing not only the sublimated rage feeding into the moral panic about liquor theft, but also how these retributive fantasies shape and give meaning to the reality of crime and punishment (Werth, 2022).

Our study further highlights the centrality of emotion in informal discourses on crime and punishment. Hayward (2012), who calls on criminologists to examine “how human beings use and abuse [cyberspace]” (p. 455), argues that “the ‘a-spatial’ nature of online ‘communities’ lends itself to ‘emotion dumping’ and other outpourings of personal self-expression that would never be tolerated in physical space” (p. 457). Indeed, our findings draw attention to deep-seated emotions underpinning users’ comments about the causes and needed responses to stop liquor store theft crime, specifically rage and anger targeted at the alleged offenders and their families, as well as toward government for failing to keep “law-abiding citizens” safe. Commenters’ discussions revealed a desire for renewed law and order, in the context of a firestorm about theft of alcohol. Drawing on Young’s (2009) discussion of “moral indignation,” we question why individuals expressed such visceral outrage, especially since they are not directly affected by theft from a government corporation that profits by hundreds of millions annually (e.g. Froese, 2022). Rather, we recognize that “the focus of moral panic is closely related to the source of anxiety” and that “it is not . . . a mistake in emotion” (Young, 2009: 14). Therefore, the moral indignation of this firestorm must be contextualized within Canada’s ongoing settler colonial context, as well as deeply engrained cultural tropes (see Vowel, 2017) that have contributed to racism and stigma against Indigenous persons in Canada.

While some commenters endorsed fairly moderate solutions (e.g. greater in-house security measures), other commenters vocalized fantasies of extra-legal violence, including the right to self-arm and use (lethal) force against liquor store thieves. Pratt (2000) shows that people desire certain punishments not simply for deterrence or to address crime risk. Rather, penal fantasies are driven by a range of other factors, including the pleasures associated with imagining certain punishments (see also Dudai, 2018; Hörnqvist, 2021). Additionally, people’s desires for punishment and control are linked to their perceptions of their own position within society (see e.g. Carlson, 2015). As Garland (2008) points out, the roots of the disturbance in a moral panic may reflect fear and anxiety over the decline of the status quo or a “cherished way of life” (p. 12). Our data suggest online commenters conceived of themselves as deserving of safety and security while constructing Indigenous peoples as undesirable, deemed superfluous, undeserving of security, and in need of harsh or even lethal punishment. We suggest that commenters’ rage-filled desire for violent punishment may be a way to emphasize their threatened and idealized status as deserving citizens in the context of fear over waning white privilege and safety.

Online comments about the causes and responses to liquor theft provide a window into broader discussions about security, law, and criminal justice in Manitoba. For example, calls for more security and increased powers for security guards, as advocated for by many users in this study, have been made in regard to other local issues, such as several groups calling to expand security staff’s legal authorities in Manitoba hospitals and universities in response to an alleged increase in drug-related violence in these settings (e.g. Annable, 2019). Further, Winnipeg is often believed to be one of the most dangerous Canadian cities, with its police-reported crime rate sitting well above the national average (Olatunde, 2019; WPS 2022); it is thus not surprising that online commenters took great interest in debating the causes and solutions to liquor store theft, mirroring Manitoba media’s focus on crime news and violence. The temporally bounded episode of liquor store theft provides insight into public views focused on the issue of liquor store theft, but which reflect broader discussions in Manitoba politics and media.

Alongside existing scholarship which argues that digital platform communication increases the severity of panics because they favor the production of exaggerated claims without constricting filters (Walsh, 2020), our findings also show more diversity in opinion than we might have anticipated prior to data collection. While more research is needed on digital firestorms, our study suggests that rather than leading to uniformity of opinion, and a high degree of incivility, at least some diversity in opinion and counter-claims-making may be found in these online bursts accompanying news-mediated moral panics. Specifically, it is noteworthy that rational and technical crime prevention and expressive and violent punishment coexisted in the penal imaginary. Also, while race was mostly invisible in local news, it was a point of contention online with commenters offering both racist, and more liberal/progressive interpretations as well as acknowledgment of past injustices. Our findings therefore show how digital communications can facilitate, though at times also challenge, highly volatile and short-lived firestorms working alongside and sometimes in tandem with mainstream media framing of an issue.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Katharina Maier

Steven Kohm

Notes

Author biographies

Katharina Maier is a criminologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg. Her qualitative research on homelessness, drugs, public health, and punishment has been published in Social Problems, Probation Journal, Law & Social Inquiry, and Punishment & Society, among other venues. She is lead editor of Punishment, Probation and Parole: Mapping Out ‘Mass Supervision’ in International Contexts (2024, Emerald).

Steven Kohm is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. His research focuses on media, popular culture, and crime, and has been published in leading journals, such as The British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, and Critical Criminology. He is co-editor of The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research.

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