Discuss and describe a moral panic from a social science perspective.

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.

In human societies there will always be issues or problems that occur which cause some form of reaction from those who feel that their values or societal equilibrium is being threatened. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young led the way in explaining the notion of moral panics and how they are formed and their consequences on society. There have been numerous of these moral phenomena over the years, which have gripped society in a vice lock of terror and more often than not, ignorance. This essay will discuss the concept of the moral panic and look at the case of HIV/AIDS which caused a huge conflict of morality within society. This essay will also analyse the failings of health organisations, politicians, and the

In Goode and Ben-Yehuda's article " The Moral Panic: An Introduction “, the idea of moral panics are explored and what constitutes something being a moral panic. During a moral panic a substantial amount of people must believe that "something" is a threat to their society, the author’s note that moral panics are always about "something". Moral panics have 5 components to them and follow in this order (1) concern or fear: (2) hostility toward the folk devil or perceived threat: (3) a certain level of consensus about the nature of the threat; (4) a disproportion between the concern and the threat and: (5) a degree of volatility, meaning a rise and fall in importance of threat. The idea in the 1920's that alcohol posed a national threat causing

Since the early-2010s, debate around the sexualisation of children has instigated much social alarm. A number of media articles (Cameron 2010; Critchley 2009; Doherty 2011; Kermond 2012, Jones & Cuneo 2009; Snow 2013; Tuohy 2012) have depicted the sexualisation of children as a prevailing social matter which accentuate concepts represented in moral panic discourse. In everyday practices of reporting public and social events, moral panic frequently becomes elicited by society’s mass mediated exaggeration of certain social events. What becomes apparent from Critcher’s work (2003), is how understandings of public incidents become portrayed as concerning through socially constructed and distorted notions of panic which become widely adopted views. As Cohen (1972) suggests, moral panic becomes a state of panic through the encouragement of important social agents which believe that an ideological perspective is threatened or endangered by a particular view. Thereby to accentuate these notions using moral panic discourse, this essay will investigate whether representations of sexualised children constitute a moral panic contrived by mediated distortions or is truly a concerning societal issue through an analysis of the processual and attributional model (Critcher 2003). Drawing on both discursive models of moral panic will allow a thorough investigation of the catalysts for moral panic involving the sexualisation of children. This paper will demonstrate how moral panic discourse

Viewers across the nation are affected by the social media causing stress on the subject by bombarding the public with media stories, rumors and “a sense of mass panic”. Victims have to relive that horrible moment because the media wants to

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.

To reject the existence of consensual theories – new deviancy asserted that society functioned in the interests of the powerful who were able to foist their attitudes throughout society because of the control they exerted over the state’s ideological apparatus (such as religion, education and the mass media), its political system and its coercive machinery especially the police and the courts. Thus the moral, cultural and political values of the dominant classes become adopted throughout society – creating an illustration of consensual values which in reality did not exist.

In the article, “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction” by Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, the authors explore the meanings behind moral panics, what contributing factors ignite the panics, who or what may be the cause of moral panics and so forth all while with providing interesting examples. They also propose five criterias that goes into defining moral panics which are; concern, hostility, consensus, dispositionality and volatility. Concern is regarding a measurable or manifested heightened level of

Teenage pregnancy and parenthood are often seen as strictly negative and problematic, with the moral panic surrounding them only growing as media and government play a role in perpetuating these ideas of negativity surrounding them. Though it is a contentious issue, what are often ignored are the underlying causes of the social phenomena that are teenage pregnancy and parenthood. The experiences of poverty and social exclusion by many pregnant teens and teen parents have not been proven to be more severe than what these young people were experiencing before, so it brings into question the validity of the moral panic as well as the aims of programs meant to decrease teen pregnancy and parenthood. Looking at teen pregnancy and parenthood, first

Stanley Cohen uses the term ‘moral panic’ to describe the identification of groups of people that are deemed to threaten our whole way of life and from whom society must be protected’. (Kelly & Toynbee P363) He defines the term as a sporadic episode which, when it happens, causes people to worry about the values and principles held by society that may be in jeopardy. This quite often led to a nostalgic view that the past had been a more harmonious time of life without such disorder and that the youth certainly behaved, on the whole, better in days gone by.

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

Moral panic is a phenomenon, in which people’s reaction to events and/or actions is exaggerated by the massive influence of the mass media. Public reaction is believed to be triggered by the hypothetical threat from groups or actions (even statistically insignificant), which are considered as deviant. Negative attitude to the phenomenon may develop even if the recipient of the news has never directly encountered it.

How did the sociologist Stanley Cohen define the concept moral panics? What, if any, is its continued relevance? Discuss with reference to sociological research.

Certain groups of young people have been labelled by the media as deviant. This has been done through an exacerbation in the way they are represented which causes moral alarm and fear amongst the public as their reactions have been shaped by the media. Moral panic can cause changes in the public opinions, protocols and even legislation. Media labelling results in media amplification which is the process whereby over exaggeration by the media causes more people to join in and create more criminal activity. This over exaggeration of certain stories leads to the glamorisation of criminal activity to basically impress others to do the exact same thing. Stanley Cohens uses the term “Folk Devils” which refers to the negative stereotypes that are

This belief that tabloids instigate moral panic is prominent in the book Hooligan by Pearson (1983). He introduces us to the concept of moral panic and heightens our awareness of the image of the criminal. This concept was evident in the aftermath of Trainspotting, as people believed that the major cities in Britain were all filled with drug addicts and that if you visited there you were putting yourself in serious danger of being mugged by one. Pearson believed that the public were put in a state of fear due to the misrepresentation of criminals in the tabloids. A fine example of this could be seen when, in Easter of 1964, the entire front page of many significant tabloids was plastered with stories of how youngsters had beaten up an entire town and a community had been invaded by a mob ‘hell bent on destruction'. Mods and Rockers had been accused of assaulting local residents and destroying a great deal of public property. However, after extensive research, Cohen(1973) discovered that this was untrue and the amount of serious violence and vandalism estimated by the tabloids was actually very small. "The typical offence throughout was not assault or malicious damage, but threatening behaviour." After Cohen confronted