Middle Eastern Appearances: “Ethnic Gangs”, Moral Panic and Media Framing

作者

1. Scott Poynting    University of Western Sydney
2. Greg Noble   University of Western Sydney
3. Paul Tabar  Notre Dame University, Beirut

資料來源 

 boi: 10.1177/000486580103400105  

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology April 1, 2001 vol. 34 no. 1 67-90

摘要

This article details a moral panic in 1998–2000 about “ethnic gangs” in Sydney's south-western suburbs and analyses its ideological construction of the links between ethnicity, youth and crime. It documents the racisms of labelling and targeting of immigrant young people which misread, oversimplify and misrepresent complex and class-related social realities as racial, and the common-sense1 sharing of these understandings, representations and practices by “mainstream” media, police and vocal representatives in state, local and “ethnic” politics. The data used in this analysis are largely comprised of English-language media extracts, press, radio, television — both commercial and government-funded; and national, state and local in circulation, supplemented by interview material, from an ethnographic pilot study, with Lebanese-Australian youth, Lebanese immigrant parents, ethnic community workers, community leaders and police.