Bridging the Deficit in Moral Panic: A Sociopolitical Analysis of Middle Aged Women in the Philippines

• In Event: Children, Adolescents, and Media: Research Escalator 1

Abstract

This discourse argues for an emerging model of communication in conveying ideas where sense making of panic research is critically analyzed. The Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) framed the investigation of (1) anger, (2) fear and (3) threat among the different stereotypical roles of middle age women as young wife, mother to children, career executive and economic provider.

It attempts to bridge the gap of social intersubjectivity in panic research by providing an emergent model for analytical discourse. While a number of analytic studies have examined how particular linguistic repertoires are used in news coverage, still it remains under researched (Carvalho, 2007:225).

EPPM provided the impetus to determine how select news reportage sensitize mid-life women in the Philippines to potential risks using fear or threat appeal (Leventhal, 1970). Debunking the extended parallel process model in conjunction with feelings of severity (one’ perception that if the potential negative outcome occurs, it will be serious), susceptibility (feelings of being vulnerable), self efficacy (one’s ability to perform the necessary behavior) and response efficacy (the ability of that behavior to alleviate risk) (Witte, 1992), the study tested all constructs as evoking stronger positive intention/ unintentionally in promoting moral panic. This was undertaken to elucidate the normative and temporal actions/reactions of the study’s subjects.

Three case studies tested EPPM factors employing a sociological critical discourse analysis where the first phase will be a textual analysis. Here, discourse analysis centers on textuality as a level of discourse establishing pertinent relations or significances anchored on the premise that discourse not only embeds meaning but also produces it. The second case in point approached discourse as a singular event centering on context as the space where discourse emerged and in which it acquires meaning. Finally, the third investigation socio-political analysis treated discourse as information, ideology and a social product.

Author

• Maria Gwenetha Ybanez Pusta, U of Santo Tomas