THE LATINO CYBER-MORAL PANIC PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

1

THE LATINO CYBER-MORAL PANIC PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

by Nadia Yamel Flores-Yeffal, Guadalupe Vidales & April

Plemons

To cite this article: Flores-Yeffal, Nadia Y., Guadalupe Vidales, and April

Plemons. 2011. “The Latino Cyber-Moral Panic Process in the United States.”

Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 14 (4):568-589. DOI:

10.1080/1369118X.2011.562222

Abstract:

In the past few decades, the anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States has been influenced, in part, by the massive immigration of Latinos to the United States. The internet technology in the Web 2.0 age offers a new medium in which this anti-immigrant movement can appear and create what Cohen calls a ‘moral panic’, which we claim to has become a Latino cyber-moral panic. Of a subsample taken from 170 anti-immigrant websites, the authors examine the role of internet in the creation of a cyber-moral panic against Latinos in the United States in which they find the classic stages of moral panic must be modified and updated. Facilitated by the internet, a ‘call for civil action’ stage is added to the classic moral panic process in which donations and direct civil and political action are sought from online visitors. Recycled information is spread via other anti-immigrant websites, blogs, forums, and other social media, helping to accelerate the moral panic process due to the ability to quickly spread information, reach those who have access to online technologies and hardware, the assumption of anonymity, etc. Using the updated moral panic process model, the authors apply these stages to the current nativist movement which has resulted in a wave of hate crimes against immigrants, several pieces of new anti-immigrant legislation, and fostered an environment widespread discrimination, oppression, and dehumanization against the contemporary ‘folk devils’, or Latinos in the United States.

Keywords moral panic; Latinos; cyberspace; folk devils; anti- immigrant legislation

Introduction

According to Cohen (1972), ‘moral panic’ is the reaction of a society against a specific social group based on beliefs that the subgroup represents a major threat to society. Usually, the information spread is exaggerated or fabricated by what Becker (1963) calls‘moral entrepreneurs’ who create a threatening

2

situation with inflated rhetoric and develop a sense of fear against the subgroup. Commonly, this rhetoric is spread with the use of popular and mass media (e.g. news- paper headlines, radio shows, television programs, web-sites, weblogs, and/or discussion forums). Such outlets divert society’s attention from more pressing issues affecting American society and those who are in control utilize resources such as ‘politics, social status, gender, wealth, religious beliefs, and mobilization of the masses’ to dominate, both, ‘materially and ideologically’, the information targeting the subordinate group (Adler & Adler 2009, p. 152).

Today, an immigrant subgroup is being targeted and victimized by a moral panic

– Latinos/as, particularly, Mexican immigrants (Massey 2007; Chavez 2008; Perez et al. 2008). Such demonization of a specific subgroup of immigrants is not new in the United States. Throughout history, US immigration policies have been described as unfair and capricious procedures in which the US government acts without any regard to the immigrant’s rights and needs (Calavita 1992, 1996; Ngai 2004; Massey 2007). First, the United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which discriminated against Chinese immigrants. Then, European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, such as Russian Jews, German Catholics and Italians, faced a second wave of discrimination where the same rhetoric previously used against the Chinese was also utilized to demonize and dehumanize these new immigrants (Brodkin 1999; Foner 2000; Ngai 2004; Portes & Rumbaut 2006).

Chavez (2008) states that the new ‘Latino Threat Narrative is part of a grand

tradition of alarmist discourse about immigrants and their perceived negative impact on society’ (p. 3). He further argues that immigrant Latinos are labeled ‘illegal aliens’ to emphasize their criminal status, which presents them as a group of criminal outsiders unworthy of social services, educational support and legalization. Most recently, the introduction of the Arizona Bill SB1070 (makes it illegal not to carry proof of citizenship and allows local officials to enforce federal immigration laws), increased deportations, and discussions on amending the 14th amendment on birthright citizenship have disproportionately targeted and affected Latinos in the United States. Despite the increasing number of Asian immigrants during this new immigration wave, their group is not targeted because Asians immigrants have been perceived as ‘the model minority’ due to their high levels of education and income which have exceeded even those of the non-Hispanic Whites in the United States (Chou & Feagin 2008). Therefore, a more negative image has been placed on the relatively new Latino population in the United States.

Due to online technological advances, this negative perception has

increased and become more pervasive; ‘moral entrepreneurs’ have facilitated the spread of information in ways never imagined against Latinos. The near instantaneous spread of cyberspace information directly affects the process in which contemporary moral panics take place. In this paper, we use the case of the anti-immigrant sentiment against Latinos in the United States to explore the extent to which online technology influences the classic moral

3

panic stages as previously presented by scholars before the use of internet technology. First, we present the classic steps of the moral panic process developed prior to internet technology, and we discuss analytical gaps previously presented by scholars. Second, we present the results of a content analysis of online data from a subsample of 170 websites and assess the extent to which internet technology has impacted and modified the panic process.

The characteristics of a moral panic

Cohen (1972) after studying the media exaggeration and public reaction to the deviant behavior of ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’ youth, identified the moral panic concept as a collective behavior through which a person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; . . . socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnosis as solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes visible. (Cohen 1972, p. 9)

Through a form of collective behavior, ‘folk devils’ (individuals in the group being targeted) are portrayed as a possible threat to society and enemies are attributed stereotypes of evil behavior. Such threats increase the efficacy of raising concerns within a significant population segment. Citing Becker’s work on social constructionism and moral entrepreneurs, Adler and Adler (2009) argue individuals draw ‘on the power of resources of organizations, institutions, agencies symbols, ideas, communication, and audiences’ to portray a subgroup as deviant, and new social rules are created and enforced by rule creators and rule enforcers (p. 147). In this paper, the ‘folk devils’ are the Latino immigrants in the United States, and the moral entrepreneurs are the nativist individuals, groups and/or organizations with an anti-immigrant agenda. The classic moral panic stages

According to the classic moral panic process framework, a full-blown moral panic is the final stage in the moral campaign process: awareness, moral conversion, and moral panic. Through these stages, public morality can be constructed, manufactured, and spread. In the ‘awareness’ stage, a message is generated in relation to a problem by citing statistics, case examples, presenting ‘experts’ to justify their claims, and using intense rhetorical methods. The second stage, ‘moral conversion’ draws upon ‘elements of drama, novelty, or cultural myths’ in which entrepreneurs utilize wide media coverage and often seek celebrities or political leaders to convince the masses (p. 149). Through these surrogate sponsors, moral entrepreneurs legitimize their claims and convince the public to join the movement. In the final stage, ‘moral panic’, there is a temporary and widespread concern about a problematic issue promoted both by the media and legislative attention. Furthermore, formal and informal communication outlets draw attention to a specific targeted group, or ‘folk devils’, who become the scapegoats for larger social ills.

4

Classic Moral Panic process: Awareness - Moral conversion - Moral panic

Some scholars argue that certain groups emerge as social threats not necessarily because they are inherently dangerous, but rather because the moral entrepreneurs are successful in their efforts to present these groups as dangerous (Ben- Yehuda 1986). However, Cornwell and Linders (2002) argue moral panic assessment theories can be problematic because most emphasize ‘panic’ instead of looking at orderly processes that may lead to the collective reaction of perceiving certain individuals as a social threat, which may be translated into action against this subgroup. Therefore, when analyzing a moral panic, scholars should also consider how ‘social interaction, cooperation, deliberation, and concerted social action’ have taken place during the development of a moral panic (Cornwell & Linders 2002, p. 315; Fisher & Boekkooi 2010).

The construction of Latinos as a threat

Prior research demonstrates that people of color are commonly perceived as a possible threat to society (King & Wheelock 2007), and Latino immigrants are not an exception. Huntington (2004) published ‘The Hispanic Challenge’, in which he asserts that Latinos, especially Mexicans, represent an extremely dangerous threat to the United States and its culture because of their failure to assimilate, failure to learn English, and failure to adopt the Protestant values. Then, a 2005 report from the Pew Hispanic Center announced there were 12 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, and 75 percent were Hispanic (Passel 2005). More recently, the 2006 HR 4437 law, also called ‘the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act’, was the catalyst for immigration marches where millions of people marched on the streets in protest of the proposed legislation and calling for immigration reform. These marches were broadcasted globally, and it has been claimed that an anti-immigrant backlash against Latino immigrants began as a result of the 2006 immigrant Marches (Perez et al. 2008). In 2006, the US Census Bureau announced in major newspapers that the US Hispanic population was ‘projected to nearly triple, from 46.7 million to 132.8 million, from 2008 through 2050. Its share of the total US population was expected to double from 15 to 30 percent by the year 2050; thus, one in three US residents would be Hispanic’ (Broughton 2008). Given this, Latino immigrants would outnumber all the other racial and ethnic groups in the United States, including the non-Hispanic White population, therefore, representing a possible numeric threat to the nation (Chavez 2008; Feagin 2009).

American nativist rhetoric was strongly associated with issues related

to the preservation of national sovereignty, such as the protection of US territory from an invasion (Chavez 2001). The immigrants’ utilization of the Mexican flag as a symbol of their nation is perceived as a racial threat and the ‘browning’ of United States. Also, other problems are perceived as a threat

5

such as the economic burden that immigrants represented and the multiculturalism agenda they embraced. According to Chavez (2008), Americans learn about the ‘Latino Threat’ through media, including the internet which provides the means to portray representations of virtual lives of immigrants. This ‘Latino Threat’ diminishes the contributions that Latinos make to the US society and obscures the barriers they face. He further argues:

The virtual lives of ‘Mexicans,‘Chicanos’,‘illegal aliens’, and immigrants’ become abstractions and representations that stand in a place of real lives. Rather than actual lives, virtual lives are generalized, iconicized, and typified and are turned into statistical means . . . represented as a threat to the nation. (p. 43)

In addition, immigrant groups have been described as ‘contaminated

com- munities’, and ‘popular rhetoric about immigration often operates by constructing metaphoric representations of immigrants that concretize the social “problem”’ (Cisneros 2008, p. 569). Immigrants also have been identified in cyberspace as ‘the immigrant problem’ (Sohoni 2006). In this way, immigrants become degraded images and not human beings. Goode and Yehuda (1994) argue ‘folk devils’ are used as metaphors or symbolic representations of moral panics; they are shrouded in myths and empirical falsehoods. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce the term Latino cyber-moral panic, in which we claim that the use of cyber technology has provided a dangerous platform in which the already existent anti-immigrant movement has become more dangerous against Latinos. Here, false and manipulated information transforms Latino immigrants into the contemporary American ‘folk devils’, or those perceived as threatening the social order and blamed for much of society’s problems (Cohen 1972). Moral entrepreneurs and the use of internet technology

Media outlets tend to include such allegations against the subgroup, in this case against the Latino immigrants in the United States, into their media content and emotionally charging otherwise dispassionate subjects to maximize their audiences (McRobbie & Thornton 1995). Also Shoemaker and Reese (1996) note that ‘the more deviant people or events are, the more likely they are to be included in media content and the more likely they are to be stereotyped’(p. 270). Alarmist websites, internet blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, internet forums, television programs, video hosting sites such as YouTube, radio talk shows and billboard propaganda, among other types of public free expression in the era of the reflexive and interactive Web 2.0, are utilized to spread the information, which generally includes hate content instantaneously at low cost, and to an even larger audience than news- paper and TV consumers. As Castells et al. (2008) states, the ‘public sphere’ is culturally and politically critical because it is the ‘space where people come together as citizens and articulate their autonomous views to influence the political institutions of society’ (p. 2). The public sphere refers to the ability to form social opinions as a result of rational public debate (Habermas

6

1991[1973]) which has been revived with the use of the internet technology (Papacharissi 2002). In addition, the internet allows for the access to tools which permit individuals to engage in new social and political action, have instant access to social network outlets and exchange of information at a distance (Bowen 1996; DiMaggio et al. 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Van Laer & Van Aelst 2010).

Actors at the top of the power structure who are active in the movement

and who enjoy greater access to the internet utilize different features, such as derogatory images, exaggerated pictures and discriminatory cartoons to effectively spread the Latino cyber-moral panic to others, which is then reproduced and transmitted by individuals mainly also via cyberspace. Social power online is no longer simply at the hands of the few or elite. While moral entrepreneurs and politicians can exert ‘considerable influence’ over media and social thought, the audience is equally as active in creating, reproducing, and influencing content (Castells 2007). In either case, the internet allows a new form of cyberspace socialization containing a number of technological advances used as outlets for people to exchange information, enjoy relative anonymity and share their social views and values to untapped mass audiences (DiMaggio et al. 2001; Bergh & McKenna 2004).

The moral entrepreneurs penetrate the mass media using alarmist reports

often cited by major newspapers. Such alarmist news produced by those reports help sell more newspapers and reach a larger audience given that, at the time of writing this paper, most newspapers were published via cyberspace which is now playing a more ‘decisive role’ in shaping social movements (Castells et al. 2008).

Scholars have previously described consequences of dangerous online rhetoric

and discourse (Schafer 2002; Chavez 2008; Daniels 2008), but only a limited body of research analyzes the use of cyberspace to create moral panics. They have only explored topics outside the realm of social inequality, such as, the danger of ‘Troll’ posters (Baker 2001), drug use online (Gatson 2007), or children utilizing internet technology (Marwick 2008). In this paper, we use the case study of what we call the Latino cyber-moral panic in order to assess the process of the creation of moral panics online. To do so, first we assess to what extent the Latino cyber-moral panic has taken place in the United States, and then we re-evaluate the classic moral panic stages by analyzing how the internet affects and alters this process.

Methodology

We utilized a multi-method approach in cyber space consisting of

online ethno- graphic research followed by content analysis of anti-immigrant websites. Since the distinction between public and private worlds is not always clear in cyber space, we took precautions to ensure ethical principles of privacy and confidentiality (Garcia et al. 2009). For instance, we employed an ‘open

7

source approach’ to permit us flexibility when conducting online ethnography while ensuring the ‘non-alienation’ of our online participants (Bakardjieva & Feenberg 2001; Berry 2004). Online ethnography

We conducted an online ethnography (Fox & Roberts 1999) also called virtual ethnography (Hine 2000), or cyber-ethnography (Ward 1999; Gajjala 2000, 2002) to study our ‘virtual communities’ (Rheingold 1993). Our online ethnography consisted of online participant observation, field notes and data documentation from various cyber social networks including anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant websites, US government websites, documents and reports about immigration online, blogs and forums (both pro- and anti-immigration), online newspaper articles, forums, Facebook, YouTube, emails and online video hosting since May 2006. The authors have observed evidence of the moral panic through visiting these sources. For example, one of the authors has been an online participant-observer of an anti-immigration forum which began before the 2006 immigrant marches and spent an average of two hours per day discussing immigration issues and gathering information from other websites, blogs, forums, and news articles mostly available online and posted by other forum participants. She also obtained information concerning the main sources and arguments that supported the anti-immigrant sentiment were originated. In addition, the three authors have been conducting content analyzes of several talk radio programs and political news television shows, and collecting data from talk radio websites, Twitter posts, and Facebook updates also related to the same television and radio programs, where the discussion of anti-immigrant issues are the norm. Content analysis of anti-immigrant website documentation

After participating on these cyber groups and collecting various data and documentations, the authors conducted a content analysis of anti-immigrant websites Because content analysis of websites is challenging due to the unfeasibility of knowing population size (Schafer 2002; Gerstenfeld et al. 2003), we utilized a purposive sample which consisted of 60 anti-immigrant websites; a subsample obtained from a snowball sample of 170 anti-immigrant US websites. The first websites for the snowball sample were originated by the authors via their participation in different internet outlets as described above which helped to identify several key sources including : (1) anti-immigrant online forum; (2) The Southern Poverty Law Center hate map (http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/hate-map), the Southern Poverty Law Center is a non-profit civil rights organization devoted to fight hate and bigotry, as well as seeking justice for vulnerable groups in our society; (3) the Anti-Defamation League (http://www.adl.org/about.asp), another non-profit web site dedicated to fight all forms of bigotry in the United States; and (4) sites linked to by other anti-immigrant websites. Interestingly, each anti-immigrant website contained several links to other anti-immigrant websites and this component allowed for an easy construction of the snowball sample which reached 170 websites. The

8

criteria used to identify a website as anti-immigrant was that at least 50 percent of its content was dedicated to attacking immigrants, either undocumented or legal. We examined this subsample to test and expand Adler and Adler’s moral panic framework targeting Latinos in the United States with the use of the latest internet technology – a phenomenon we call a Latino cyber-moral panic. We discovered that most of these websites had anti-immigrant messages included in the name of the websites; for this reason identifying these sites as anti-immigrant was not difficult. Additionally, because our snowball sample was linked from those sites, we assumed that an anti-immigrant website would only lead us to other anti-immigrant websites as those kind of titles can be viewed as infor- mally sanctioning or promoting the site’s content and purpose. We performed a simple random sample which led us to a random sub-sample of 60 websites. We utilized Nvivo software to perform content analyzes. The participation of the several online outlets mentioned above also directed the coding and the identification of patterns during the content analysis stage. In addition, we utilized the search engine, Alexa, in order to check the ranking of the websites according to the traffic and visit volume. With this information, we evaluated the popularity of the websites and allowed us to analyze and map website networks, traffic, and demographics. (http://www.alexa.com; see Daniels’ (2009) methodology).

Results

Adler and Adler’s classic first stage-awareness

During the preliminary stages of our research, while constructing our snowball sample of websites, we unintentionally discovered the anti-immigrant movement in cyberspace is led by the following three ‘think tank’ organizations via their websites:

1. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) 2. NumbersUSA 3. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

We realized most of the sites, if not all, had links to the three think tanks named above, which illustrates the degree of the trio’s influence. Others identified the ‘trio’ as very influential in the anti-immigrant movement (Beirich 2009), and noted that their websites did not utilize nativist language (Sohoni 2006). These are what Daniels (2009) refers to as ‘cloaked websites’, because the anti-immigrant agenda is not apparent to online visitors. We argue the founders, board of directors, supporters and site creators or moderators are, in fact, the moral entrepreneurs leading the incrimination against Latino immigrants. Other moral entrepreneurs are from media outlets, such as political commentators, talk radio hosts, and politicians, but the data suggested the central moral entrepreneurs behind the cyberspace movement are FAIR, NumbersUSA and CIS, all three in particular.

9

The content analysis of the anti-immigrant website subsample revealed that one of the main strategic processes in attacking the subgroup was with the creation of metaphors and extensive use of images portraying Latino immigrants as ‘folk devils’. This strategy increases the phobia by presenting the immigrants as inhumane and inferior to Americans. Another awareness-promoting strategy was the use and manipulation of images and words in order to portray an extremely negative image of the Latino immigrants to site visitors. For example, Latino immigrants were portrayed as dangerous, possible terrorists, killers, drug addicts and were accused of spreading diseases, such as the H1N1 virus, being dirty and living in crowded and unsanitary conditions. They were blamed for taking the jobs of Americans, reducing their wages, being a burden to society by not paying taxes, stealing identities, utilizing medical facilities, asking for welfare financial benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, or using fraudulent documents to vote among other claims.

Most sites posted claims together with other text disclosures stating

that the sites and arguments had ‘nothing to do with race’ or being negative toward immigrants, but rather that their goals were only making people aware of the sudden increase in immigration statistics and the possible burdens this could rep- resent to the American society. Most provided neither empirical evidence, nor empirical statistics to support their claims, but instead provided inflated statistics and pictures (which were altered and/or fabricated) that were posted next to each claim. For example, websites commonly juxtapose pictures of a young, smiling, blond haired child with one of a brown-skinned person’s criminal mug shot, followed by a picture of a coffin to imply the child was murdered by an immigrant. However, there is no evidence of the picture’s validity, or if the story’s circumstances are even accurately associated with the people in the images.

User-created posts and comments and blogs linking to anti-immigrant

sites revealed that, in general, site visitors rarely questioned the claims or content of the images. On the contrary, visitors began reproducing the links of exaggerated claims on additional blogs, forums, Facebook or Twitter pages and private sites to spread awareness to others, which exponentially spread the information in today’s participatory, often user-created, Web 2.0. For example, a hoax about immigrant statistics (found by us in 2006) was circulating online that was said to have been published by Los Angeles Times, but the Los Angeles Times (2007) published a disclaimer (Internet Immigration Hoax 2007;http://latimesblogs. latimes.com/readers/2007/11/internet-immigr.html) stating this was false. The statistics stated that, ‘95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens’, and, that ‘Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages’. The hoax targeted Latinos, as it was supposed to have been published by Los Angeles Times and included statistics about Spanish speaking radio stations, etc. These false statistics spread online via anti-immigrant websites and newcomers believed the statistics enough to copy and paste them over and over in other forums, blogs, private websites, etc without questioning their validity or fact-checking. The claim appeared legitimate since it cited the Los Angeles Times, and,

10

as of 13 September 2010, we found the phrase, ‘Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages’ resulted in 1,570,000 hits from the Yahoo search engine, and the phrase ‘of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens’ yielded 9,690,000 results. Therefore, internet users spread the information and fear to others on the internet in order to make everyone else aware of the Latino threat (Chavez 2008).

Adler and Adler’s classic second stage-moral conversion

We found issues of credibility regarding these sites in documenting their ‘facts’. There is extensive evidence that moral entrepreneurs constructed an extremely efficient system of fabricating information. The content analysis of documents posted by the anti-immigrant websites and on newspaper articles posted on blogs and forums revealed that many documents that appeared to be trustworthy empirical reports conducted by experts in the field had, in fact, been faulty and/ or exaggerated information and not published by major national newspapers. For example, in the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (2007) annual report was posted as a trusted source as follows:

Dissemination is a critical aspect of the release of all new FAIR reports. Each of FAIR’s new studies is introduced in conjunction with a press conference or an electronic release to the media. This guarantees that important new information provided by FAIR receives the widest possible attention. As an

FIGURE 1 Mapped online network connections of CIS, FAIR, and Numbers USA

(graphic was created using touchgraph’s software found at: http://touchgraph.com/seo).

11

FIGURE 2 Graphic representation of web traffic for CIS, FAIR, and Numbers USA during the evolution

of the Arizona Immigration Law (SB 1070). Source: Alexa Internet (www.alexa.com).

twice. In the 102-page report, a content analysis revealed the world ‘illegal’ was used 704 times, ‘alien’ 241 times, and the phrase ‘children of illegal aliens’ 81 times, showing an extensive use of derogative terms including the attempt to portray a bad image against immigrant children.

New stage – a call for action: The portrayal of Mexican immigrants as

danger- ous creatures and invaders did not seem to be enough; the spread of Latino cyber-moral panic also calls for direct action. The content analysis of our sub- sample revealed a new stage that is absent in Adler and Adler’s original three stages of the moral campaign process. We name this new stage the ‘Call for civil action’ which includes various forms of calls for action, either civil or pol- itical. It is through this stage that individuals personally participate and directly contribute to the anti-immigrant movement. Prior moral panic research has never before identified at this stage, the direct participation by the individuals being converted. The internet is providing a new ‘meta-medium’ in which the public sphere can be utilized as a means to gather financial, political, social, and cultural support (DiMaggio et al. 2001).

A call for civil action: Some urge the boycott of American companies

supporting immigration by offering detailed information about how and why to carry it out. Others invite citizens to become “minutemen”1 and/or volunteer to protect the borders, as well as the reporting of undocumented immigrants. In fact, we found minuteman websites for almost every state in the nation, even those not in close proximity to the border. There were calls for donations which can be paid with a credit

12

card or PayPal (a secure form of online payment). Some sites, such as FAIR also provide site visitors with information on how they can make recurrent donations to the organization. In fact, aside from making one-time donations, a person can contribute to FAIR’s cause literally from the moment they join the work force until after their death. From 401K plans (where donations will be matched dollar for dollar) to endowments, FAIR provides infor- mation on how one can include their organization and cause as a beneficiary of a life insurance policy or will. Site visitors are asked to directly participate in funding, supporting, and furthering the movement through this new stage, a call to action (found at: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/support/other_ways_ to_give.html).

Other forms of obtaining money from upset citizens was through the sale of minuteman videos, gold or silver coins, documentaries about immigration, hats, shirts, and bumper stickers with various patriotic anti-immigrant phrases, such as ‘no amnesty’ or ‘no invasion’. A more extreme case sought donations to construct billboards all over the nation with the message, ‘Stop the Invasion, Protect our Borders’ (Melamed 2006). More importantly, revenue accumulated from these sites can be used to ‘make campaign contributions and sway political candidates, to fund research favorable to their [movement] and to lobby against unfavorable legislation’ (Adler & Adler 2009, p. 152).

A call for political action: A successful tactic utilized by the cyberspace movement is the invitation to engage in political action by contacting politicians. This pervasive strategy includes elaborate information charts about how to contact legislators, current legislation for congressmen to vote on, petitions to sign, and where to rally in favor of or against a political proposition related to immigration, etc. They even include direct links to legislators and offer ready-to-send messages which can be sent asking for immediate action related to immigration issues. For example, visitors can browse their state’s list of congressmen to find out their stance and voting records on anti-immigration legislation. At NumbersUSA, those congressmen with highest regard, or the ‘best’ anti-immigration voting records, win the title of ‘True Reformers’ – those who ‘promise to support all or nearly all of NumbersUSA’s top immigration priorities’. Of course, site visitors are provided a link to that congress- man’s personal website and encouraged to contribute to the ‘True Reformer’s’ political campaign, in the hope of ensuring their re-election and support for the nativist movement (http://www.numbersusa.com/content/ true-reformers.html).

Adler and Adler’s classic third stage-evidence of a moral panic

Finally, evidence from the sites’ content analysis revealed that most sites posted evidence of the movement’s successes. Figure 2 shows the dramatic increase in website traffic of the three organizations over the past 18 months, which shows an increased volume in site visitors and interest in the topics of immigration, but most importantly, it provides empirical evidence of a moral panic. This increase in traffic is assumed to be strongly related to the Arizona law because peaks in traffic closely correlate to dates of major events

13

during the unfolding of the anti-immigration legislation. We recognize it is less likely that ‘unsuspecting web users are unknowingly lured into’ the anti-immigration sites, but rather, are using a process of the self-selection which aligns with their own interests (Daniels 2008), also exemplified in the work of Daniels (2009) on the use of ‘cloaked websites’ and online extremist groups. Therefore, such a widespread increase in interest, and web traffic to these nativist sites is further evidence of a moral panic.

For example, FAIR’s annual report claims that their number of site visitors in

2007 surpassed the 1 million mark and received over 6 million views, a significant increase from previous years (FAIR Annual report 2007). Evidence of the pro-immigrant movement’s failures was commonly seen in reminders of the lack of immigration reform, successes of government intervention and new legislation, and the massive raids and deportations that have taken place in the past few years (Moreno 2007). Reports also show lower numbers of Mexican immigrants crossing the border to the United States, although Mexican immigrants in the United States are not returning to Mexico (Passel 2005; Passel & Cohn 2009). Unfortunately, the number of hate crimes which result from the Latino cyber-moral panic movement has yet to be measured. One example of a hate crime, which resulted as a consequence of this movement, is the case of a minuteman activist who was accused of killing a man and child in their own home:

An outspoken anti-immigration activist who was at the center of a series of violent crimes in Everett earlier this year now stands accused of the home-invasion killings of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter. Shawna Forde, 41, and two associates in her Minuteman American Defense group are charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona. (North et al. 2009)

Shawna Forde, the activist mentioned above, besides being a minuteman volunteer, was also found to be one of the executive directors of FAIR. Forde, who further jeopardized the organization’s reputation for the murders of the immigrants, was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death (‘Jury decides on death penalty for woman who headed vigilante squad’ 2011).

New stages of moral panic as a result to internet technology

Awareness - Call for Action - Moral Conversion - Call for Action - Moral Panic

1. Awareness: Online technology aids this stage’s facilitation enormously by effi- ciently multiplying the number of online forums in which the information can be spread to portray the subgroup as dangerous. With the help of blogs, forums, email, Facebook, Twitter and other internet websites, the negative claims, metaphors and negative images about the subgroup, in this case the Latino immigrants, spreads more efficiently and to a larger audience than in the past. In addition, today many media outlets rely on online investigative

14

methods for their information and content, so the information online does not stay exclusively online.

2. Moral conversion: Online technologies support and reinforce this stage since the information is able to reach larger audiences and be validated and presented to legislators given the extent to which the information is covered by the media. The claims are validated and legitimatized by the mass media and political leaders who receive economic support from the same moral entrepreneurs who fabricate the information. This is used in hopes of convincing the larger public to join their movement.

3. Call for action stage: This new stage has two main components: call for civil action and call for political action.

(a) The call for civil action constitutes different ways in which individuals can participate in the cause by doing direct public service such as becoming minuteman, supporting massive boycotts of companies aiding illegal immigration, or donations to organizations to invest in the fabrication of more evidence to support the movement online. This means that even though we call this the third stage, civil action can happen during or after the awareness moral conversion stage

(b) The call for political action becomes quite an efficient way for individuals to participate directly in politics and support legislation against the sub- group, particularly with the use of online technologies. Information about current legislation, phone numbers to call and tell your congress- men how to vote, and instructions (sometimes even a script to write or read) to help to convince the legislators to vote in favor of the anti-immi- grant laws are provided in various online forms such as social networking status, blogs, news feeds and alerts, and site and discussion board posts.

4. Moral panic stage: In this stage, there is temporary and widespread

concern about a problematic issue promoted both by media and legislative attention and in which ‘folk devils’ are the scapegoats for larger social problems. The internet and online technology, as stated before, exponentially increase the ability, efficiency, and power of the moral entrepreneurs to reach mass audiences and markets. Online technologies assist the entrepreneurs in gaining social support on legislation, spreading the message about ‘folk devils’, and ensuring the public puts pressure on elected officials to ‘do some- thing’ about the ‘problem’.

Conclusion

The utilization of racial stereotypes, images, metaphors, emotions, and the cre- ation of ‘virtual lives’ of the immigrants, are effective tactics utilized by the moral entrepreneurs via cyberspace with the purpose of sending several negative messages against presumed ‘folk devils’, in this case, Latino immigrants in the United States (Chavez 2008; Cisneros 2008; Feagin 2009). In this research, we used as an example, the Latino cyber-moral panic and found empirical evidence to support that Adler and Adler’s three classic moral panic stages have taken place, but in a more effective manner with the use of new online technologies.

15

A new stage not previously identified was conceptualized called a ‘call for action’, where donations, political action, and civil action are promoted and enforced via cyberspace. Through calls for donations, moral entrepreneurs collect funds from the movement’s panic victims to pay for other forms of propaganda and further spread the moral panic. Similar internet tools have already been identified as being key instruments for the direct participation of individuals in other political and social movements around the world (Bowen 1996; Van Laer & Van Aelst 2010). This new theoretical contribution helps address concerns regarding the lack of attention to the role of civil action in the current moral panic theory as addressed in the sociological literature by Cornwell and Linders (2002). In addition, extensive evidence of widespread concern about the issue was shown, especially, by the increase in the number of site visitors, the large number of news headlines regarding the issues claimed by moral entrepreneurs, and by the large number of new pieces of anti-immigrant legislation and laws enforced in the past few years, which have affected disproportionately Latinos in the United States more recently, such as the Arizona law known as HB1070. In this research, we also found that as defined by Goode and Ben-Yehuda, the final stage of a moral panic has been reached. This Latino cyber-moral panic is promoting the widespread dehumanization, discrimination, oppression, and racial profiling of all Latinos who currently live in the United States. If, in fact, the Latino population will outnumber the Non-Hispanic White population in the near future, the whole country will suffer its consequences by oppressing Latinos.

The results presented here indicate that the continually evolving online tech-

nologies, if used in a negative way, can be extremely dangerous against specific subgroups of people. Future moral panics could occur and progress even faster than today and more efficiently could aid in the creation of legislation, hate crimes, and social suppression against the ‘folk devils’ being targeted. Further- more, if moral panics indeed provide an avenue for social reproduction of particular ideologies (Beisel 1997; Gatson 2007), then cyber-moral panics could then become a dangerous never-ending source of social reproduction of suppressing and discriminatory ideologies against specific subgroups of people. Future research should be conducted to examine the role of politicians as a type of secondary moral entrepreneur with the goal of political benefit. This could be con- ducted much like the investigative research by Arsenault and Castells (2006) on the effects and production of misinformation surrounding the Iraq war. In addition, more research should explore the power of civil and political action with the help of cyberspace technology, and whether it can also be used for a more positive cyber movement in which the targeted groups, instead, could acquire some kind of benefit which could help them to succeed instead of placing them in a disadvantaged position in society.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Jessie Daniels, Rogelio Saenz, Zulema Valdez, Jenny Davis, and Sarah Gatson and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts.

16

Note

1 According to Chavez (2008), the Minutemen are a group of civilians whose final goal is ‘to monitor the Arizona– Mexico border in the hopes of locating clandestine border crossers. However, this surveil- lance operation also had a larger objective: to produce a spectacle that would garner public media attention and influence federal immigration polices’ (p. 132). According to the Minuteman Project Command Center, their organization is ‘a multiethnic, immigration law enforcement advocacy group. – Operating within the law to support enforcement of the law. – The power of change through the power of peace’ http://www.minutemanproject.com/ organization/about_us.asp.

References

Adler, P. & Adler, P. (2009) ‘Constructing deviance’, in Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction, eds P. Adler & P. Adler, Wadsworth, Belmont, California, pp. 147–154.

Arsenault, A. & Castells, M. (2006) ‘Conquering the minds, conquering Iraq: the social production of misinformation in the United States – a case study’, Infor- mation, Communication & Society, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 284–307.

Bakardjieva, M. & Feenberg, A. (2001) ‘Involving the virtual subject: conceptual, methodological and ethical dimensions’, Journal of Ethics and Information Tech- nology, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 233–240.

Baker, P. (2001) ‘Moral panic and alternative identity construction in Usenet’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 7, no. 1.

Becker, H. S. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Free Press, New York.

Beirich, H. (2009) ‘The Nativist lobby: three faces of intolerance’ in A Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, ed. Mark Potok, Montgomery, Alabama, pp. 1 – 21 [Online] Available at: http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/ downloads/splc_nativistlobby.pdf (10 January 2011)

Beisel, N. (1997) Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Vic- torian America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Ben-Yehuda, N. (1986) ‘The sociology of moral panics: toward a new synthesis’, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 495–513.

Bergh, J. A. & McKenna, K. Y. (2004) ‘The Internet and social life’, Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 55, pp. 573–590. Berry, D. M. (2004) ‘Internet research: privacy, ethics and alienation – an

open source approach’, The Journal of Internet Research, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 323–332. Bowen, C. (1996) Modem Nation: The Handbook of Grassroots American Activism Online,

Random House, New York.

17

Brodkin, K. (1999) How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. Broughton, A. (2008) ‘Minorities expected to be the majority in 2050’, CNN.com, [Online] Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/08/13/census. minorities/index.html (11 August 2009). Calavita, K. C. (1992) Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration and the INS, Rutledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc, New York. Calavita, K. (1996) ‘The new politics of immigration: “balanced-budget conserva- tism” and the symbolism of proposition 187’, Social Problems, vol. 43, pp. 284 – 305. Castells, M. (2007) ‘Communication, power and counter-power in the network society’, International Journal of Communication, vol. 1, pp. 238–266. Castells, M., Qui, J., Fernandez- Ardevol, M. & Sey, A. (2007) Mobile Communi- cation and Society: A global Perspective, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Castells, M., Qui, J., Fernandez-Ardevol, M. & Sey, A. (2008) ‘The new public sphere: global civil society, communication networks, global governance’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 616, no. 1, pp. 78–93. Chavez, L. (2001) Covering Immigration Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation, University of California Press, Los Angeles. Chavez, L. (2008) The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, California. Chou, R. S. & Feagin, J. R. (2008) The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO. Cisneros, D. J. (2008) ‘Contaminated communities: the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant in media representations of immigration’, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 569–602. Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Routledge Press, London. Cornwell, B. & Linders, A. (2002) ‘The myth of “Moral Panic”: an alternative account of LSD prohibition’, Deviant Behavior, vol. 23, pp. 307–330. Daniels, J. (2008) ‘Searching for Dr. King: teens, race & cloaked websites’, in Elec- tronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface, eds Erin Ennis Harry Halpin, Paolo Mangiafico, Jennifer Rhee et al., Lulu Press, Durham, NC, pp. 94–116. Daniels, J. (2009) Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD. DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, W. R. & Robinson, J. P. (2001) ‘Social impli- cations of the internet’, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 27, pp. 307–336. Feagin, J. (2009) The White Racial Frame, Routledge Press, New York. Federation for American Immigration Reform. (2007) 2007 Annual Report, FAIRU- S.org, Washington DC, [Online] Available at: http://www.fairus.org/site/ DocServer/2007_Annual_Report.pdf?docID=2402 (18 October 2009). Federation for American Immigration Reform (2009) ‘US Immigration Policy and Legislation’, FAIRUS.org, [Online] Available at: http://www.fairus.org/site/ PageNavigator/legislation (18 October 2009). Federation for American Immigration Reform (2010) ‘The fiscal burden of illegal immigration on United States taxpayers’, FAIRUS.org, [Online] Available at: http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/USCostStudy_2010.pdf?docID=4921 (23 November 2010). Fisher, D. R. & Boekkooi, M. (2010) ‘Mobilizing friends and strangers: understand- ing the role of the internet in the step it up day of action’, Information, Com- munication & Society, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 193–208. Foner, N. (2000) From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration, Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Fox, N. & Roberts, C. (1999) ‘GPs in cyberspace: the sociology of “virtual commu-

18

nity”’, The Sociological Review, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 643 – 671. Gajjala, R. (2000) ‘Cyberethnography: reading each “Other”’, [Online] Available at:

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik/Cyberethnography.pdf (10 September 2010).

Gajjala, R. (2002) ‘An interrupted postcolonial/feminist cyberethnography: compli- city and resistance in the “Cyberfield”’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 2, pp. 177–193.

Garcia, A. C., Standlee, A. I., Bechkoff, J. & Cui, Y. (2009) ‘Ethnographic approaches to the internet and computer-mediated communication’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 52–84.

Gatson, S. (2007) ‘The body or the body politic? Risk, harm, moral panic, and drug use discourse online’, in Real Drugs in a Virtual World: Drug Discourse and Com- munity Online, eds Edward Murguia, Melissa Tackett-Gibson & Ann Lessem, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, pp. 23–44.

Gerstenfeld, P. B., Grant, D. R. & Chiang, C. P. (2003) ‘Hate online: a content analysis of extremist internet sites’, Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 29–44.

Goode, E. & Yehuda, N. B. (1994) Moral Panics: the Social Construction of Deviance, Blackwell, Massachusetts.

Habermas, J. (1991 [1973]) ‘The public sphere’, in Rethinking Popular Culture: Con- temporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, eds C. Mukerji & M. Schudson, Uni- versity of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 398–404.

Hine, C. M. (2000) Virtual Ethnography, Sage Publications Ltd, Thousand Oaks, CA. Huntington, S. (2004) ‘The Hispanic challenge’, Foreign Policy, vol. 141, pp. 30–45.

Internet Immigration Hoax (2007) ‘A conversation on newsroom ethics and standards’, Los Angeles Times, 28 November, [Online] Available at:

http://latimesblogs. latimes.com/readers/2007/11/internet-immigr.html (12 November 2009).

Jury decides on death penalty for woman who headed vigilante squad (2011) CNN Justice News, February 22, 2011, [Online] Available at: http://articles.cnn.com/ 2011-02-22/justice/arizona.double.killing_1_shawna-forde-death-penalty- anti-illegal-immigration?_s=PM:CRIME (25 February 2011).

King, R. D. & Wheelock, D. (2007) ‘Group threat and social control: race, percep- tions of minorities and the desire to punish’, Social Forces, vol. 85, pp. 1255–1280.

19

Los Angeles Times (2007) ‘Internet immigration hoax’, [Online] Available at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2007/11/internet-immigr.html (10 September 2010). Marwick, A. E. (2008) ‘To catch a predator: The Myspace moral panic’, First Monday, vol. 13, no. 6, [Online] Available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/ cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2152/1966#author (12

November 2010). Massey, D. S. (2007) Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System, Russell Sage, New York. McRobbie, A. & Thornton, S. (1995) ‘Rethinking “Moral Panic” for multi-mediated social worlds’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 559–574. Melamed, S. (2006) ‘Politics writ large: illegals go home’, MediaLifeMagazine.com, [Online]Availableat: http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/ publish/Alternative_media_43/Politics_writ_large_Illegals_go_home_ 5721_printer.asp (18 October 2009). Moreno, S. (2007) ‘Immigration raid leaves Texas town a skeleton’, Washington Post, [Online] Available at: http://www.gorena.org/pdf/287g-Cactus.pdf (18 October 2009). Ngai, M. M. (2004) Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. North, S., Holtz, J. & Writers, H. (2009) ‘Activist Shawna Forde charged in double slaying: woman with troubled past in Evertt now accused in Arizona’, The Herald, [Online] Available at: http://heraldnet.com/article/20090613/ NEWS01/706139922/1054#Activist.Shawna.Forde.charged.in.double. slaying (13August 2009). Papacharissi, Z. (2002) ‘The virtual sphere: the internet as a public sphere’, New Media & Society, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 9–21. Passel, J. S. (2005) Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Popu- lation, Pew Hispanic Center, Washington, DC. Passel, J. S. & Cohn, D. (2009) Mexican Immigrants: How Many Come? How Many Leave? Pew Hispanic Center, Washington, DC, [Online] Available at: http:// pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=112 (18 October 2009). Perez, H. L., Benavides, C., Malagon, M., Velez, V. & Solorzano, D. (2008) ‘Getting beyond the “symptom”, acknowledging the “disease”: theorizing racist nativism’, Contemporary Justice Review, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 39–51. Portes, A. & Rumbaut, R. (2006) Immigrant America: A Portrait, 3rd edn, University of California Press, Los Angeles. Rheingold, H. (1993) The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Schafer, J. A. (2002) ‘Spinning the web of hate: web-based hate propagation by extremist organizations’, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 69–88. Shoemaker, P. J. & Reese, S. D. (1996) Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content, Longman, New York. Sohoni, D. (2006) ‘The “Immigrant Problem”: modern-day nativism on the web’,

Current Sociology, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 827–850. US Census Bureau. (2006) ‘The Hispanic population in the United States: 2004 detailed tables’, Census.gov. [Online] Available at: http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/hispanic/cps2004.html (10 October 2009). Van Laer, J. & Van Aelst, P. (2010) ‘Internet and social movement action reper- tories: opportunities and limitations’, Information, Communication & Society, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 1146–1171.

Ward, K. (1999) ‘The cyber-ethnographic (Re) construction of two feminist

20

online communities’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 4, no. 1, [Online] Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/1/ward.html (21 December 2010).

21

22