Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996 (review)
2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/uni.2002.0021
ISSN1080-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Social Media and Politics
ResumoEvery major extension of print or technological literacy stokes social anxiety, as new forms of cultural and technical competence threaten the established order. The advent of new communications media has proved especially threatening to visions of ideal childhood, for children's use of such media tends to be early and formative. Such early exposure challenges the mediation of parents, teachers and other authorities, and often incites adult panic. Past changes in print culture have had just such a destabilizing effect, as has the spread of broadcast media. Current changes in online culture have rebooted this cyclic pattern of panic, making the old fears once again urgent and profitable. Ours is the age of censorware, after all: Net Nanny, Cybersitter, and their ilk, promise online security at home, and, increasingly, in the workplace (with employers acting as mock-parents, as in the hype for MoM, a popular Net-tracking program for home and office). Such censorware has proliferated in the United States over the last five years, during which the Communications Decency Act has been adopted and overturned, only to be followed by the controversial Child Online Protection Act of 1998. Meanwhile, in the wake of the school-shooting pandemic, anxiety over film and video has again spiked, spurring attempts to criminalize the distribution of violent entertainment to youth.
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