Moral Panics And Media Panics

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.

Mass media have a prominent role to play in modern society. The use of the media can bring about unexpected changes and improve the social situation as it impact our social, civil, cultural, political,economic and aesthetic outlook. Modernization has transformed media into a crucial feature of human activity. In today's society, media influence issues such as the impact of global warming, genetic engineering, deployment of military forces, religion, government spending, nuclear testing and environmental legislations. The rise in the media has influenced international policy and decision within the government. It is now more critical than ever that policy planners understand the factors that encourage negative domestic reactions. Growing international concerns have prompted many to establish, or consider establishing postings in allied countries, and future deployments of this type are currently being

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves”(Reagan). In the book, 1984, Winston recognizes the power the government has over the citizens of Oceania. The citizens lack privacy from the government. George Orwell warns society about a government with total control in 1984. Based on Dana Hawkin’s article, “Cheap Video Cameras Are Monitoring Our Every Move”, as well as Beech Etal’s, “The Other Side of the Great Firewall”, society may truly have something to fear in the form of surveillance and information manipulation.

36). They also characterized moral panics using the following five features: “Concern”, “Hostility”, “Consensus”, “Disproportionality”, and “Volatility”, which typically occur sequentially. Moral panic itself is defined by Cohen as when “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Burns and Crawford, 1999, p. 148). The subject and duration of a moral panic varies. It may be new or it can be something that has existed for a while but only for a certain time is it seen to be problematic. It can suddenly appear then quickly disappear or it may produce noticeable differences in law or in society (Burns and Crawford, 1999, p. 148). It can be proven both, the Burns and Crawford article entitled “School Shootings, the Media and Public Fear: Ingredients for a Moral Panic,” and the Brezina and Phipps article entitled “False News Reports, Folk Devils and the Role of Public Officials: Notes on the Social Construction of Law and Order in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.” fully demonstrate the social reaction to the event they are describing meets the definition of a “moral panic” according to the definition by Cohen (Burns and Crawford, 1999, p. 148) and Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s five features (Steeves and Milford,

Manipulation through the media has lead to serious consequences in 1984 and the US today.

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.

As mentioned earlier Stanley Cohen (1972) is one of prominent sociologists that devised the term ‘moral panic’. He defined the concept as ‘A sporadic episode which, as it occurs, subject’s society to bouts of moral panic, or in other terms, worries about the values and principles which society upholds which may be in jeopardy’ (Cohen, 1987; 9). The term ‘moral panic’ was introduced by Stanley Cohen (1972) in his book entitled ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’.

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

Fear is inevitably tied to the common saying “I am watching you”. When one’s actions are constantly monitored and privacy being relentlessly invaded, the individual soon will possess a sort of fear. In the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, the government uses surveillance as a tool for exploiting the privacy of the people which then engages their fear.

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

A moral panic is a phenomenon that is examined and understood in an unbiased fashion. This type of panic locates a “folk devil,” is shared, remains out of synch with the seriousness it evokes, and varies in intensity over time (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 41). On the other hand, a media panic is a moral panic about the effects of a communications medium of technology (Class lecture: January 27, 2016). Overall, a moral panic is based upon the reaction of society from an event while a media panic is the reaction of society from a type of technology. This paper looks to examine the similarities and differences between surveillance in the government today and surveillance in the government during the Cold War. It will address the effects these events have or had on society while examining specific media panics that played a role in society’s reactions to these historical events. By providing evidence to prove how these panics affect society, I will examine why these moral and media panics exist and the impact they have had on society as a whole.

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. _________________________

The ability of democracies to make decisions in line with the long term interests of its citizens is vulnerable to intense, short term shift in public opinion. There are few shifts more radical than those experienced by societies in the throes of moral panic – those times where a perceived social threat creates high levels of concern and anxiety in the population. Though much has been written about moral panics, there has not yet been a general discussion about its implications for the theory and

The mass media's panic reporting is to make the people aware of the problem, then to include reliable outcomes for its effects, and finally to provide reliable expert information on how to deal with the problem and lessen negative expectations as was supposed to happen in the y2k reporting but unfortunately did not happen.