According to sociologist Ian Marsh, a moral panic "Has been widely adopted by both the mass media and in everyday usage to refer to the exaggerated social reaction caused by the activities of a group/person, to portray them negatively for a specific reason."1 In the run up to the 2017 General Election, several newspapers and tabloids chose to represent Jeremy Corbyn as a moral panic, using a variety of different stereotypes to create their representation of the Labour leader. Different newspapers have different ideologies, and this is evident in their report of several incidents and events that have occurred in the past 2/3 years. The Daily Mail, who are typically right-wing, report stories and represent people in a way that furthers their pro Conservative ideologies, whereas the Daily Mirror, who are left wing, will report on the same event, but represent it completely differently to suit their ideologies. Jeremy Corbyn was unique, because there were a variety of events that did occur, but these newspapers, and more, report them so differently, making him an interest subject to focus on to discuss moral panics. Kenneth Thompson argues that the media target "People who are alarmed by an apparent fragmentation or breakdown of the social order, which leaves them at risk in some way."2 The Daily Mail and The Sun used this quite often, they portrayed Corbyn to be a danger, or a threat to our society, usually when Corbyn argued against something that they believed in, nuclear disarmament for example is something the Sun stand for, whereas Corbyn is against it due to the damage it causes, however this allows the right-wing papers to create and reinforce their stereotype that Corbyn is a 'Danger', or a 'Threat to society', because he's making the country significantly weaker. This isn't the only stereotype that they reinforced, they also created a 'Useless and Ineffective' model that heavily centred around mediating Corbyn in a negative way, often using words that could infanticide the man to make him seem less intelligent. These two models were constantly being reinforced by the right-wing media, so it's very interesting to compare their reports to other newspapers and see how differently they have mediated Corbyn in the same event to reinforce their ideologies and further transform Corbyn into a moral panic.
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