Skip to main content

The Moral Panic of Madeleine McCann Part 2

Brief background information on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

In 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann and her family (Mum, Dad and her two-year-old twin siblings) were on holiday in Portugal (from England).  They were staying at a Family Resort (Praia da Luz) with some family friends and their children.  On the third of May 2007, Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann were having dinner at the Resort's restaurant, which was approximately 55 metres away from the room that Madeleine and her siblings were sleeping in.  


The parents checked on their children every half hour throughout the evening, until 10pm (Portugal time) when Kate McCann discovered that Madeleine was not in her bed and that the window (that was next to her bed) was wide open to the street.  This started the investigation of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Many people searched for her the night of her disappearance, but there was no trace of her.  According to www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk (2018), the first 48 hours of a person's disappearance are crucial, because if the law enforcement has not made an arrest or have a person of interest connected to the crime, then the chances of the case being solved are cut in half.  Unfortunately for Madeleine McCann, her case has not been solved for the past eleven years.


Media's response to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
The media went crazy over the whole Madeleine McCann case.  In a way, Madeleine's case went viral and was all over the news worldwide.  The media created moral panic for parents all over the world.  Because of Madeleine's disappearance, the surveillance over children has increased.  As technology is expanding, so are new parenting techniques to keep children "safe".  In many cases, there are tracking apps, that parents can sync to their phone, as well as their child's so that they have their GPS location at all times.  The surveillance of children has increased in the past decade, "mobile phones are increasingly being used as surveillance devices by parents, as they enable parents to monitor phone usage, including the content of SMS messages sent and received, identify callers (even when caller ID is withheld), approve or block contacts, as well as a range of other functions." (Taylor & Rooney, 2016, p.5)



Because the rate of technology and media is rising, it is scary to think about what could be possible in the future, in terms of child surveillance.  In a television show called Black Mirror, (which is a futuristic dystopian take on what could happen in the future), a mother chips her daughter, and with this new technology, the mother is able to track her daughter, monitor her heart rate, see what she can see, as well as sensor anxiety-inducing scenes.



Public's Response to the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann


Because the case of Madeleine McCann has been in the news for a decade and a bit, many people want answers and to have closure over her disappearance.  Some people made YouTube videos about her disappearance and came up with their own conspiracy theories to what happened.  






Coming up to Madeleine's 12th anniversary of her disappearance, a new Netflix documentary has come out, called 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann', directed by Chris Smith, was released 15th of March.  This has created a moral panic of its own, as Madeleine has not been in the media for quite some time, yet has made a comeback.  There have been a lot of pointing fingers, as to who did what, yet with this documentary, as with the case, there is definitive solved ending, as to who kidnapped/killed Madeleine McCann.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Moral Panic of Madeleine McCann Part 3

What are the consequences with the type of media used in the Madeleine McCann Case? It has been over a decade since Madeleine McCann disappeared, and there have been a lot of theories as to who has kidnapped her if she is alive or dead.  The Netflix documentary, 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann', has had a bit of backlash and has brought out the inner detective in some public citizens.  The Netflix documentary has claimed that Madeleine was kidnapped for sex-trafficking because of her race, age, socio-economic background and her nationality. The parents of Madeleine believe that she was kidnapped through the open window, which had a 50-centimetre gap.  One of the police who visited the site of the "abduction" has discredited this theory, explaining in a  podcast  titled "Red Flags", that  "the window is only absolute maximum 50cm wide, in reality about 46cm wide, and it's already a metre off the ground ...  I had an [inaudi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Moral Panic of Madeleine McCann Part 4

How useful is the Moral Panic thesis as a tool for helping us to understand what has happened? Moral Panic helps people to understand what has happened in a specific situation because it makes us feel empathy.  In the case of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, many people felt compassion for the parents and family, and the majority of people who followed the case would have personally known a three-year-old child, at some stage in their lives.  Moral Panic teaches people to be more cautious when in specific environments, for example, stranger danger, not leaving children alone in a foreign environment and not jay-walking.  It gives people a sense of anxiety, and if people have seen someone do something, and it has a negative outcome, then the chances of other's doing that same thing are meagre. Is the Moral Panic thesis still relevant? The question 'is the Moral Panic thesis still relevant?' is very subjective from person to person, and is all up to personal v...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Moral Panic of Madeleine McCann Part 1

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann shocked the world as it took the news by storm.  This blog will be discussing the moral panic thesis and explaining the media reporting and the public response to the Madeleine McCann Case. What is moral panic? Moral panic is any widespread anxiety that some people feel about an issue that is said to threaten the very fabric of society  (Lamb, 2013) .  Moral panic is usually in the form of media technology, such as the news, newspapers, blogs and social media etc.  The term 'Moral Panic' was coined by Stanley Cohen, who  was the first to create a systematic empirical study of how the media amplify deviance and public responses and  wrote about it in his 1972 book titled, 'Folk Devils and Moral Panics'.  He based his book off of his PhD, which was written in 1967-1969.  In his book, Cohen wrote about how the media responded to huge fights that happened between two gangs (the mods and...
Post a Comment
Read more