Moral Panics in Suburban Texas
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http://www.media-anthropology.net/durington_panics.pdfPermanent Link
http://hdl.handle.net/11603/13798Collections
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor/Creator
Date
2007-03-06Type of Work
29 pagesText
working papers
Department
Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal JusticeCitation of Original Publication
Durington, Matthew. (2007) "Moral Panics in Suburban Texas". EASA MediaAnthro E-Seminar Series.Subjects
Teenagers -- Drug abuseEthnology -- Press coverage
Media ethnography
Plano (Tex.)
Suburban life
Moral panics
Abstract
This paper details portions of an ethnographic study of a moral panic that surrounded the
heroin overdose deaths of several teenagers in the American suburb of Plano, Texas.
Media ethnography engages numerous individuals who represent different institutions
who participated in various discussions and the creation of strategies that emerged
throughout the tenure of the moral panic in the suburb. These forces acting in an
interdependent fashion assisted in the creation of a new social subject, the suburban
teenage heroin addict. Both the residents of Plano, Texas and the media that helped
establish the moral panic relied on a representational history of the American suburb that
conflates and entangles notions of race, class and space and demarcates this social space
as white. I discuss the practice of media ethnography through a comprehensive content
analysis of several forms of media, and the ethnographic reception and conveyance of
that media among individuals within the context of fieldwork.