How Media Frame Events About Moral Deficiency

"Moral panics" is a term always used by western scholars to researchbehaviour as deviant or social problematic. It is also used to explain people’s reactionto deviance. Stanley Cohen, the first person who studies "moral panics" withempirical research, advances that media plays a very important role in forming moralpanics. Based on the research of relationship of moral panics and media done byCohen, this study takes "Pengyu" event as example and analyses reporting techniquesthat Chinese media use to report this kind of events by content analysis method, andthen use text analysis method to presents the reporting skills in detail. At last, throughfocus group interview method this study analyses the reporting techniques aboutmoral deficiency deeply and widely. What’s more, this study also initially discussesthe reasons why media use that techniques and probes into social response to them byinterviewing some journalists and receivers.Based on the analysis above, this study found out that the reporting techniques of"Pengyu" event in Chinese media often presented characteristics as follow: first,exaggeration mainly because of using analogy limitlessly; second, distortion mainlybecause of using many negative words; third, symbolization mainly because oflabelling and crowding; fourth, prediction mainly because of using sentences topredict the problems will happen for a long time or the negative influence will last fora long time. This four features make "Pengyu" event become a carrier of moral panicsrather than a single event in the eyes of mass media or even the public. Therefore, thisresearch suggests media should rethink how to report events about moral deficiencyappropriately. Firstly, media should predict what will happen after reporting that kindof events in that way so that exaggeration can be prevented; secondly, media shouldnot use too many extreme words so as not to lead to extremely negative tendency;thirdly, do not use single "bad person" to symbolize a crowd and prevent labelling;fourthly, do not get use to judging similar events as the bad one and preventstereotype. If media can do all of the above, they can report phenomenon of moraldeficiency in our society more and more better, lead positive consensus and thenprevent moral panics.