ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how The New York Times and El Universal portray Mexico’s drug-related violence, “spillover violence,” as moral panic by meeting Adler and Adler’s three stages of a moral panic: (1) awareness; (2) moral conversion; and (3) moral panic; and Flores-Yeffal’s call for action stage. It examines how the framing devices of border security and fear and threats of spillover violence resulted in spillover violence becoming a media spectacle, which occurred when the media focused on the possibility of drug-related violence crossing over into the US, and the politicians who called for tougher border security measures.
