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A New Frontier in Gambling Policy: Internet Wagering as Morality Policy
Author(s) -
Ferraiolo Kathleen
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
policy and internet
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.281
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 1944-2866
DOI - 10.1002/poi3.113
Subject(s) - morality , leverage (statistics) , legislation , public policy , politics , government (linguistics) , the internet , frontier , political science , deviance (statistics) , sociology , public relations , law and economics , law , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , machine learning , world wide web
The 2006 enactment of a measure that essentially prohibited online wagering represented the U.S. federal government's first major foray into gambling policy in decades. Bringing the theoretical leverage of political science's morality policy literature to bear on this issue, this article draws extensively upon transcribed debate from the Congressional Record to investigate the language used by congressional opponents of online gambling. The results indicate that they deployed moral (“online wagering poses a special threat to youth”), mixed (“online wagering has negative effects for families, communities, and society”), and instrumental (“legislation is needed to modernize the law and empower the states”) arguments. The results improve our understanding of the factors that shape federal online gambling policy, and offer theoretical implications for our understanding of morality policy as a category of public policy.