Panic in the Streets: Home, Homelessness and Public Spaces

Abstract

This paper explores a media-escalated panic about homelessness in Australia in light of Cohen's work on moral panics. In dialogue with Cohen, the paper locates panic in the ground of collective fear, and in a family of panics about boundaries, home and public space, especially streets. Our thesis is that the mass media short circuits diffuse fears and, in communicative dialogue with other social fields implicated in the life of a panic, stages diffuse fear as a moral panic. The virtual aspect of each stage of the panic is explored.