Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Examining the volume and content of media reporting on obesity, we evaluate whether the “obesity epidemic” can be constructively analyzed as a “moral panic,” in which the obese are treated as “folk devils” who violate societal values of self-control (Cohen 1972). Drawing on content analysis of 212 media articles, we find that media coverage of obesity does indeed have many of the characteristics of a moral panic. Public attention to this issue has ballooned in a way that is disproportionate to increased rates of obesity and treatment of related problems like smoking, hunger/malnutrition, and eating disorders. The media has dramatized and stylized the issue by reporting most heavily on scientific studies with dramatic findings, employing alarming metaphors, citing laundry lists of health risks associated with obesity, and sidestepping scientific debates about whether obesity is as much of a problem as some maintain. The media has treated obesity as a moral issue by focusing on individual more than structural obesity causes and solutions, especially when discussing African-Americans, Latinos, or the poor, suggesting that the issue of obesity has the potential to deepen inequality based on race, ethnicity, and class, as it simultaneously reinforces prejudice based on body size. We identify several factors that are associated with increased reporting on obesity, including increased consumption, increased publication of medical research on obesity, marketing of weight-loss drugs, and the number of weight-loss surgeries performed, lending some evidence for grassroots, elite-engineered, and interest-groups theories of moral panics.

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