In Defense of Imagination: Canadian Youth Culture and the <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> Panic in Canada, 1980–1995
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the iconic tabletop role-playing game released in 1974, sparked controversy from its early inception. This article examines the emergence of moral panic around D&D, particularly in the United States and Canada during the early 1980s. It explores how concerned groups, such as Bothered Against Dungeons & Dragons, portrayed the game as a corrupting influence on American youth. Focusing on the spread of panic into Canada, this article investigates the role of American media in shaping Canadian perceptions. This study highlights questions about transnational cultural influence and the impact of media on societal norms. Was the moral panic primarily a result of American cultural influence, or was there tangible evidence linking D&D to real-world violence in Canada? Through analysis of media representation and cultural discourse, this article seeks to shed light on these complex dynamics and to highlight moments of youth resistance to narratives of moral panic.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".