Media, morality, and madness: The case against Sleaze TV

“Media, Morality, and Madness: The Case against Sleaze TV”; offers an alternative way of understanding media effects by looking at the moral panics that swirl around certain forms of popular culture and by focusing on the distinction between “high”; and “low”; culture that is implicit in effects research. The essay is organized in four parts. The first deals with the politics of culture; the second reframes the debate around popular culture in terms of Stuart Hall's concept of “moral panic”; the third provides an analysis of talk show narrative and communicative strategies that give rise to such panics; and the fourth concludes the essay with a discussion of the politics of talk show talk.