Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-VictimsChild abuse, incest, child molestation, Halloween sadism, child pornography: although clearly not new problems, they have attracted more attention than ever before. Threatened Children asks why. Joel Best analyzes the rhetorical tools used by child advocates when making claims aimed at raising public anxiety and examines the media's role in transmitting reformers' claims and the public's response to the frightening statistics, compelling examples, and expanding definitions it confronts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from criminal justice records to news stories, from urban legends to public opinion surveys, Best reveals how the cultural construction of social problems evolves. |
Contents
1 The Rise of the Child Victim | 1 |
2 Rhetoric in Claims about Missing Children | 22 |
Statistics as Claims | 45 |
4 Definition Typification and Domain Expansion | 65 |
5 Network News as Secondary Claims | 87 |
6 Popular Culture as Secondary Claims | 112 |
7 Fears and Folklore | 131 |
8 Concern and Public Opinion | 151 |
9 Competing in the Social Problems Marketplace | 176 |
Notes | 189 |
Recent Fiction about Threats to Children | 209 |
| 211 | |
| 229 | |
Common terms and phrases
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