Public Incidents As A Moral Panic

You find paedophiles commenting on small girls pictures and admiring them in not just a beautiful way but a demoralising way. Pictures taken by girls themselves or secretly taken by lovers and boyfriends are exposed on the media for everyone to see, is that not stripping the innocence of young children? The media need to realize what they post all the time can have an influence on how children see things, as adults we pave the way for children to loose their innocence. They are exposed to all these conditions that make them think “okay this is okay to do, or everyone is doing so there isn’t any harm in doing it

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.

It represents the collective fear of the society from the "other". I suggest that today moral panic is not simply a matter of exaggerated social problems, but it is a fear of losing control over the "other" and the fear of the truth about the "other". Moral panic intends to reinforce the boundaries between the "self" and the "other". My case study is the moral panic of pornography on the Internet.

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

(BBC network, 2014). It can also force people to change in character, which is a growing concern. Sexualisation in our society has become extremely prevalent within the younger female gender. Some may dismiss this issue as no more than yet another moral panic situation between sexuality and young girls, but some see this as a serious subject and some of these people are in fact the girls being targeted (Church, 2014). The music industry with their music

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

Imagine the terror of a mass hysteria hoax. During the sixteenth century, witch trials caused the deaths of thousands as chaos spread throughout Europe. Many European villages in history have witnessed witch executions and the imprisonment of suspected witches. The Crucible, along with the Salem Witch Trials and the European witch trials, have many similarities and differences that make them both memorable and important.

`Nevertheless Stephanie’s whole article gets masked by expert claims which consist of topics that are not connected to the main idea of the article at hand. Stephanie leans on controversial claims from experts who have PhD’s to make up her whole entire paper. Through her use of various references she tries to support her argument mainly through text. The article leads into sections such as “SOCCER HEADING MAKES A BAD HAIR DAY” (Hanes484) and “SEXY’S NOT ABOUT SEX, ITS ABOUT SHOPPING’’ (Hanes487). She uses those sections to create different aspects of sexualization and cause the reader to reflect on the given information. With that being said these sections do state things about how the media plays on hyper sexualized images and girls becoming women too fast. However the main purpose of the article gets lost upon topic such as pornography, sexy clothing and sexting. If the organizational use of research and personal experiences had tied into Stephanie’s original claim against the Disney Princesses Empire her article would have been more put together.

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’.

Challenge: Select and describe a “moral panic” against a perceived deviance. Analyse the role of the “moral entrepreneur” and “folk devil” in your selected case. Finally, explicate what it demonstrates about individuals and their socialization. (Length: 2 000 words)

Ana Veciana-Suarez’s article titled, “A Senior’s Photo is Too Sexy for the School Yearbook” is an opinion filled piece about a senior’s controversial yearbook picture. The controversial picture is that of Sydney Spies, a 18-year-old high-school student. In the picture, the young woman is wearing a cropped black top, a yellow miniskirt and is posing with her leg propped on a black staircase. There has been a lot of backlash against the picture. Many people agree that the picture is too revealing and is inappropriate for a high school yearbook. Suarez, the author of this article voices her opinion not only as the mother of a high-school student, but also as a previous attendee of a Catholic high school. Suarez’s opinion in the article arises from her personal experience; she utilizes her own yearbook picture as well as her son’s yearbook to show that Sydney Spies’ picture is too risqué and is therefore, extremely inappropriate. The article, “A Senior’s Photo is Too Sexy for the School Yearbook” is poorly supported with little to no credibility; the article contains logical fallacies such as Ad Hominem, appeal to emotion and appeal to the people. The logical fallacies along with the overall lack of appeals (ethos, logos and pathos) make Suarez’s argument ineffective and poorly executed.

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.

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

Sexuality and sex in America is a complicated subject in that there is little consensus on the topic of sex in, and the American media sends many mixed messages regarding sex and sexuality to everyone, not just to adolescents. Americans are aware of sex primarily through advertising (print media, commercials, etc.) as sex is used to sell anything and everything. The media also bombards Americans with sexuality and sex on television and in films. The sexuality of teenagers is not a straightforward issue in America either. Many parents do not discuss sex or sexuality with their children. There have been ongoing debates as to whether sexuality should be taught as part of school curricula because there are such a great deal of adolescents participating in reckless and/or dangerous sexual behaviors, largely because they are grossly uneducated about sex. The paper will reference the film Juno and other texts as a meditation on the relationship between adolescent sexuality and the media.