Assess Sociological Explanations of the Role of the Mass Media in Creating Moral Panics About Crime and Deviance

One of the largest ways the media influences public opinions is through the news. News outlets report on local and world events, often applying their own bias to advance an agenda (Cavender, 2004). In general, entertainment television depicts crime, especially violent crime, far more often than it actually occurs in the real world (O’Keefe, 1987). Crime is more often than not presented to the public in two ways: crime is violent and criminals are nonwhite (Gilliam, et al, 1996). When put together, these two factors have

Moral panic is “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests and its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible” (Cohen, 1973, p.9). This means moral panic is an exaggeration or distortion of some perceived deviant behaviour by the media. In contemporary context, moral panics are not just one-off events, “it is their reappearance that confirms their status as moral disturbances of any significant order” (Marsh and Melville, 2011, p.7). Basically moral panics are social issues that relate to real fears about a particular behaviour such as paedophilia due to the exaggeration of media influence.

Moral panic What is moral panic? Moral panic is a form of collective behaviour that from one day to the other considers a certain group of people dangerous. The reasons might vary from fake rumours to real (exaggerated) facts. The period of a moral panic usually ends with social actions either in form of attacking the "other" (in the case of a Satanic Ritual) or in changing the law (pornography on the Internet).

Simon Watney ([1988] cited in Moral Panics and the Media, 2006, p. 251-252) argues that in the example of AIDS “posed a significant challenge to any moral panic model”. He proposed five major criticisms: firstly, he argues that moral panics place blame on the state as a prime mover in moral panics. Whilst this may lend itself to be true in the case of the U.K. government, it does not consider that British society was naturally prejudice against the minority groups inflicted by the virus before its arrival. Thus, the campaign to warn the public on the virus did not directly influence the public into a moral panic but was instead a factor. Secondly, “a model which separates out individual moral panics cannot appreciate how they may overlap and reinforce each other”. Thirdly, it does not recognise the significance of dominant discourse. During the 1980s, Britain had already gained a significant prejudice against these minority groups – as mentioned above – and thus it may not be useful to describe the pandemic as a moral panic as the dominant discourse of society at that time was naturally homophobic and racist. Therefore, it can be argued that HIV/AIDS only heightened the social anxiety of, for example, gay people, because the anxiety was already in place. The fourth criticism to be made by Watney (1988) is that the theory does not allow for folk devils resisting the status. Folk devils are

This can help the wider community understand their own moral obligations and behaviour within society. As noted by ‘….Smolej (2010), portrayals of crime and deviance in the media are often seen as essential parts of social control since the media has a central role in defining what is deviant and condemnable.’

Sociological theories of crime contain a great deal of useful information in the understanding of criminal behavior. Sociological theories are very useful in the study of criminal behavior because unlike psychological and biological theories they are mostly macro level theories which attempt to explain rates of crime for a group or an area rather than explaining why an individual committed a crime. (Kubrin, 2012). There is however some micro level sociological theories of crime that attempts to explain the individual’s motivation for criminal behavior (Kubrin, 2012). Of the contemporary

A moral panic is the public’s response to problems that seem threatening to the society. Moral panics are used by the media, however people are likely to panic out of proportion due the way it is upheld.

Moral panic is a fear that grips a large number of people that something is threatening society.

According to previous moral panic research (Cohen 1972; Cohen 2011; Critcher 2003; Hall et al. 1978; Krinsky 2013:1; Lull & Hinerman 1997) a moral panic may be defined as a widespread incident often triggered by alarming media stories and reinforced by reactive laws and public policy, of exaggerated or misdirected public concern, anxiety, fear, or anger over a perceived threat to social order. Additionally, other studies on moral panic (Critcher 2003; Goode & Ben-Yehuda 2009; Ungar 2001) have shown that social panics arise because of a socially perceived or real threat to certain taken for granted ideologies, values and interests. Evidently, there can be many interpretations of what can constitute a moral panic and that is why Critcher (2003) illustrates that moral panic discourse has developed rather divergent meanings in British and American

This was as a result of the studies he carried out on the UK’s media and social reaction to the ‘Mods and the Rockers’ in the 1960’s. The research was based upon a group of working-class youths; there were two groups of people who fought on the Clacton beach leaving many beach huts vandalised. Therefore this became front page news within the media, the press claiming that ‘Clacton had been terrorised by rampaging groups of ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’’ (Jones, 2001; 84). The media captured the interest of the public by using eye catching head lines and phrases, some of the phrases incorporated in the test include ‘riot’, ‘siege’, and ‘screaming mob’ (The Guardian). They use such words in a ‘moral panic’ to try and catch the attention of the public’s eye.

Is youth crime a moral panic or a moral crisis, many people will have different views however what view does the media have? The media tend to represent youth crime as a moral panic within society to create a stir and gain the public’s attention. Since the existence of youth crime the media uses this particular offence as a catalyst of creating a moral panic within the community.

Oftenly people within a culture create its own organizing principles and definitions when certain things occur that affect a community and/or society simultaneously, one of them being moral panics. Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda introduces us to the concept of moral panics and what they consists of in their article “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction”. According to the author 's, moral panic is an exaggerated response or concern by the public to an issue that is seen as threatening the moral standards of society, however the harm exposed may be minimal to none, usually ignited by the media, higher officials, action groups and so forth . Moral panic has become a well-known word often used to categorize social problems that we are exposed to today. Here, we see some examples of the three theories: the grassroots model, the elite-engineered model, and the interest-group theory, and how they are present in our lives today.

A moral panic develops in a society when there is some type of threat looking to harm the society in some way. The threat of a nuclear attack by the USSR and its possible plan to control society through communism aided in the development of a moral panic during the Cold War era (Cold War History). American fears continued to grow as the relationship between the two countries became very tense (Hadley). During the Cold War era, the public

Michael Tonry in his book “Thinking About Crime” brings up the subject of moral panics (pg 86). A moral panic as defined by Stuart Hall is as follows

Moral panics take place when the media outlets take a fairly ordinary event and turn it extraordinary. Cohen states that in a moral panic the media identifies a particular group as a folk devil (1972). Essentially folk devils can be identified as a threat to society's values. This is see when the media presents the group in a negative stereotypical fashion and again exaggerate the scale of the problem. Moral panics have three distinguishing characteristics. In Bonn’s article, Who Benefits From Public Fear, he states that one characteristic of moral panic includes a focused attention, whether real or imagined, of certain individuals or groups that are transformed into what Cohen referred to as “folk devils” by the mass media (2015). Additionally there is a noticeable gap between the concern and object risk poses. Typically this threat is less than generally perceived because of how the media outlets represent the threat. The level of concern over time fluctuates greatly. The usual pattern begins with the introduction of the threat, followed by an increase rise and then peak in public concern, which then therefore, and regularly unexpectedly, dies down. _________________________