Clowns

a sociological phenomenon?
Clowns: is it deviance,
criminal or both?

The recent frenzy was born

in South Carolina, USA in
late August 2016 after
unsubstantiated reports
surfaced that clowns were
spotted trying to lure
children into the woods.

It then spread very quickly

to the UK.

1990 Pennywise in the film IT

Clowns: deviance, criminal or both?
A University of Sheffield study of
more than 250 children, aged
four to 16, found the images
were widely disliked.

January 2008 BBC News

Is Social Media or the News to
Blame?

In part, Benjamin Radford says, yes.

Social media and the Internet have

been powerful amplifiers of the clown
sightings, he says. The stalker clown in
England, for example, was ripe for
social media, very much a product of
our time.

As a venue for sharing and spreading

such sightings, the Internet is a perfect
venue.

You couldnt have designed it better,

Radford says, adding, This level of
panic [and] concern would not exist
without the Internet.

Benjamin Radford author of Bad Clowns.

Radford says phantom clown sightings tend to be more common
during periods of social uncertainty: In the 80s, when they began,
they coexisted alongside the Satanic panic.

America is once again in the middle of social anxiety, Radford says.

Radford also says that the widespread use of the Internet and social
media has given birth to the "stalker clown," people who dress up as
clowns and scare people as a prank. These pranks are usually recorded
and spread over social media.
One notable example of this is the Northampton Clown. In Northampton,
England, 22-year-old Alex Powell stood around dressed as a clown creeping
people out for about a month in 2013. He and two friends ran a Facebook
page documenting it

The Northampton Clown

October 2016
58 October 2016
Members of the public report further sightings in Essex, County Durham
Cheshire, North Wales, Dundee, Norwich, London, Manchester, Newcastle
and Sheffield. Police make at least six arrests.
A US criminologist and professor of sociology told Time magazine that
the fascination with clowns is really the fact that theyre not real. We
dont know whats beneath that makeup. It could be anyone or anything.
Theyre actually very frightening.

For those wearing the clown mask, the concealment of their identity and
the liberation it brings may be encouraging them to behave in ways that
they wouldnt contemplate without the disguise.
'Clown hunting' groups are being set up across the Bristol area
following increased reports of people dressed as the garish
characters scaring people on the streets.

The group, calling itself Clown Hunters, has set up its own
Facebook page and is asking volunteers to join them in patrolling
the streets.

The move follows increasing reports of the 'killer clowns' across

the Bristol area.
Stuart Poyntz, an Associate Professor in
communications at Simon Fraser University, says the
media may be contributing to a moral panic.

Poyntz says the story, with its vague sense of reality,

plays on people's fears that some universal insidious
force is trying to lure or corrupt children.
The societal harms of moral panics are
numerous. It does tend to focus our attention on
the wrong kind of scapegoats that are meant to
explain problems. It also tends to distract us from
changes that are ongoing in the lives of those who
we care about most.

- Stuart Poyntz, Simon Fraser University

Sociological issues:
Mass media
Deviancy amplification
Folk devils
Scapegoats
Moral panic
Deviance
Crime