ABSTRACT
Within a scene of competition, social problems claims-makers must persuade audience members that their claims are important. This chapter looks at other kinds of social problems work: the work of constructing images of people (victims and villains), which simultaneously is the work of encouraging audience members to feel the moral outrage associated with evaluating conditions as social problems. We need to think of all the types of social problems work and all the strategies together. A good way to do this is to examine how all the various types of work by all the types of claims-makers together produce what audience members see, hear, and evaluate as a package of claims that produce a story. Social problems formula stories such as crime, poverty, terrorism, or obesity rarely are told by any one claims-maker. We all tell stories about ourselves and others but the stories told through claims about social problems are more important than our individual stories.
