Discursive transgressions and security culture: Political-moral panics in the Spanish public sphere

Abstract

In recent years, various controversies have arisen in the Spanish public sphere stemming from humorous or critical messages that questioned the sacredness of certain identity and national symbols. Among others, the controversies sparked by the writer Guillermo Zapata, the tweeter Cassandra Vera and the rapper Valtònyc are notable. Following the analytical framework of moral panics developed by Stanley Cohen in the 1970s, and later updated, we analyze the media construction of these “popular demons,” as well as the positioning of the different actors involved. To this end, we identify three moments in the construction of these panics: cultivation, operation and dissipation. We observe their mutation over time, from a beginning where it is difficult to differentiate between moral panic and political scandal to a stage of maturity in which both phenomena can be clearly distinguished. Our approach is that these moral panics are a distinctive element within the political controversies arising in the public sphere, which also reflect a specific security culture in Spain, especially after the passage of the Citizen Security Law and the reform of the Code Criminal in 2015.