The final speaker in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Melanie Radue, whose interest is in moral panics and polarised discourses in Malaysia and Germany. This is in the context of a turn towards the conservative right in countries around the world, which often uses and fuels polarising discourses through moral panics, leading to democratic backsliding. What is the role of traditional media in such processes?
The concept of moral panics helps us to understand how certain issues become identified and intensified in media discourse: moralised discourses have long been understood as intensifying polarised narratives; they …