Stockpiling moral panics
The politics of anxiety and the securitization of ‘panic buyers’ in news media reporting of Covid-19
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7174152 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tarryn Phillips (0000-0003-4027-8667, La Trobe University, corresponding author), Danielle Couch (0000-0002-5206-9072, Monash University), Carmen Vargas (0000-0001-6166-8897, Deakin University), Melissa Graham (0000-0002-0927-0002, La Trobe University), Deborah Gleeson (0000-0001-8021-9130, La Trobe University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 62-84 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Crime Media Culture An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1741-6590 • E-ISSN: 1741-6604 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/17416590241312155 |
| OpenAlex | W4406629246 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
People often respond to existential threats by stocking up on items they deem essential for survival. At the onset of COVID-19, Australians were among the fastest and most ardent to bulk buy supplies – especially toilet paper – leading to widespread shortages and tense scenes in supermarkets nationwide. In this article, we examine online and print news media representations of bulk buying behaviours at this time. Results highlight that the media disproportionately blamed shortages on lower socio-economic and migrant consumers and vilified them for panicking irrationally, threatening social decency and order, and being ‘un-Australian’. In turn, this rhetoric justified the logic that these shoppers should be criminalized, leading to heightened securitization in supermarkets. Paradoxically a moral panic about panic, this case study offers three contributions to moral panic literature. First, it reveals how different forms of anxiety receive differential responses. Both the compulsion to stockpile and the need to find someone to blame for the shortages were anxious responses to the conjunctural crisis of COVID-19. Yet bulk buying was widely denounced as irrational, while the expression of deep-seated anxieties about the behaviour of racialized and class-based ‘others’ was legitimated and popularized. Secondly, moral panics converge and exacerbate each other: widespread concern about ‘panic buyers’ was inflamed by being conceptually linked with earlier moral panics about hooded tops, gangs and Chinese migrants. Thirdly, moral panics not only direct blame but also deflect it. In this case, the imagined figure of a ‘crazy hoarder’ allowed wealthier, white Australians to morally differentiate their own bulk buying practices as reasonable preparation. It also distracted from structural precarities such as supermarket profiteering and weakened supply chains, highlighting how moral panics can exonerate those at the elite end of society for their involvement in conjunctural crises
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Anxiety · Business · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Criminology · Disease · Financial system · Moral panic · Panic · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Securitization · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Internal Medicine · Virology
Social Constructionism
Policing the Crisis
Manufacturer, retailer and consumer misbehaviour in the United States during the Second World War
Moral Panic and the Politics of Anxiety
Policing biosecurity
Gripped by fear”
Suppressing the Crisis
It is not about punishment, it’s about protection’
Beyond folk devil resistance
Moral panics and the transgressive other
Social media and moral panics
Policing the (migrant) crisis
Racial moral panic and African youth in Australia
Moral Panics
Toilet Paper Panic”
Using thematic analysis in psychology
On the concept of moral panic
Manufactured hysteria
The Risk Society in an Age of Anxiety
Risk and panic in late modernity
Moral panic versus the risk society
Obese Adults' Perceptions of News Reporting on Obesity
Covid-19 as a 'breaching experiment
The Riots of the Underclass
The victims, villains and heroes of 'panic buying
Covid-19/Sociology
Shit's Getting Real
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |