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- Title
Famous for Fifteen Minutes: Notes on the Researcher as Newsmaker.
- Authors
Best, Joel
- Abstract
This article presents the author's views and research on Halloween sadism. He says that he first heard about Halloween sadism during the late 1960's. Those early reports featured hippies who gave drugs to trick-or-treaters. Within a few years, the stories changed: now the contaminated treats often held razor blades, pins, or other sharp objects. The author found that in 1970's after the death of a child due to Halloween sadism, most people started to view it as a threat. The author surveyed on Halloween sadism. He prepared a manuscript, describing the findings, arguing that Halloween sadism was best understood as an urban legend, and suggesting that urban legends could be seen as unconstructed social problems. The author describes that when individual radio stations and newspapers arranged personal interviews with him, their interviewers asked virtually the same questions as those before them. By far the most thorough interview--lasting about half an hour--was with the Associated Press reporter. The author says that when he submitted his piece on Halloween sadism to the journal "Psychology Today," he hoped to gain some wider attention for his findings.
- Subjects
HALLOWEEN; SADISM; PERSONALITY disorders; URBAN folklore; SOCIAL surveys; INTERVIEWING; SOCIAL problems
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 1986, Vol 9, Issue 4, p372
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/BF00988465