Swine Fever

Just when you’re trying to settle down and revise, along comes - swine fever. But, is it a moral panic? On balance, no, not quite. The illness is certainly attracting a fair bit of press coverage, but if you look carefully at Cohen’s typology of the stages and elements involved in a moral panic, I think you’ll see that swine fever is missing a few of the essential ingredients.Have a look though at Peter Wilby’s column in today’s Guardian for some interesting comment on how the press has handled the case.

Back with more revision tomorrow.