{"title":"Civil Society Must Be Defended: Misinformation, Moral Panics, and Wars of Restoration","authors":"J. Bratich","doi":"10.1093/ccc/tcz041","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors’ concept, updating it in two ways. First, I focus on how the current panic has altered what they called “primary definers” (which now includes professional journalism, as a result of their own waning authority). Second, the new alliance of panic actors (journalism, technology companies, intelligence agencies, politicians, civil society organizations) are expressions of a crisis policing that is now martialized. I assess this new nexus in terms of a breakdown of civil peace into outright hostilities; as a counterinsurgency operation. I draw on Michel Foucault’s strategic analysis of power and society that challenges boundaries between politics and war. This nexus is waging what I call a war of restoration, one that has significant implications for dissent and oppositional knowledges.","PeriodicalId":54193,"journal":{"name":"Communication Culture & Critique","volume":"11 1","pages":"311-332"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"26","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Culture & Critique","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz041","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 26
Abstract
In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors’ concept, updating it in two ways. First, I focus on how the current panic has altered what they called “primary definers” (which now includes professional journalism, as a result of their own waning authority). Second, the new alliance of panic actors (journalism, technology companies, intelligence agencies, politicians, civil society organizations) are expressions of a crisis policing that is now martialized. I assess this new nexus in terms of a breakdown of civil peace into outright hostilities; as a counterinsurgency operation. I draw on Michel Foucault’s strategic analysis of power and society that challenges boundaries between politics and war. This nexus is waging what I call a war of restoration, one that has significant implications for dissent and oppositional knowledges.
期刊介绍:
CCC provides an international forum for critical research in communication, media, and cultural studies. We welcome high-quality research and analyses that place questions of power, inequality, and justice at the center of empirical and theoretical inquiry. CCC seeks to bring a diversity of critical approaches (political economy, feminist analysis, critical race theory, postcolonial critique, cultural studies, queer theory) to bear on the role of communication, media, and culture in power dynamics on a global scale. CCC is especially interested in critical scholarship that engages with emerging lines of inquiry across the humanities and social sciences. We seek to explore the place of mediated communication in current topics of theorization and cross-disciplinary research (including affect, branding, posthumanism, labor, temporality, ordinariness, and networked everyday life, to name just a few examples). In the coming years, we anticipate publishing special issues on these themes.