Defusing moral panic: Legitimizing binge-watching as manageable, high-quality, middle-class hedonism

Abstract

The rise of video-on-demand streaming services has facilitated more intensive television watching. When novel consumption behaviors emerge, cultural intermediaries may be mobilized to make sense of it and potentially legitimize it. This often takes place by raising moral panic, as it draws attention to new cultural practices and asks tastemakers to take a stance. The current study takes “binge-watching” as a discursive anchor point to investigate this process. We argue that moral panic is not only a strategy that can be employed to condemn cultural practices, but by deflecting moral concerns through mechanisms of social distinction, it can also allow intermediaries to normalize new cultural phenomena. Through inductive and deductive coding of U.S. news articles on binge-watching (n: 681), we discern three pathways through which intensive video-on-demand watching is reframed: first, the shows that are binge-watched are high quality; second, binge-watching can be controlled, at least by the right type of audiences; and third, binge-watching is fun, in that if undertaken in moderation, it can be good for viewers. All three pathways resonate strongly with new middle-class dispositions. This study shows how the legitimization of new cultural boundaries demands an interplay between social distinction and moralization.