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1. MORAL PANIC & THE MEDIA
THE RISE OF NEW MEDIA, AND IN PARTICULAR SOCIAL MEDIA, IS MAKING IT EASIER TO
CREATE MORAL PANICS. IS THIS TAINTING THE PUBLICS VIEWS ON WORLD ISSUES?
2. HISTORY AND ORIGINS OF MORAL PANIC
• MORAL PANIC: “…a condition, episode, person or group of persons that emerges to become defined
as a threat to societal values and interests” - Cohen (1972).
• FOLK DEVILS: “a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders
and deviants, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems. The pursuit of folk
devils frequently intensifies into a mass movement that is called a moral panic”. – Cohen (1972).
• DISTINCT CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL PANIC:
1. Concern
2. Hostility
3. Consensus
4. Disproportionality
5. Volatility
3. MORAL PANICS WITHIN THE MEDIA
• A SHORT HISTORY OF MORAL PANICS:
- 1970s – War on Drugs (d.)
- 1980s – AIDS (a.)
- 1990s – Satanic Ritual Abuse/Dungeons and Dragons (c&b.)
- 2000s – Human Trafficking
a. b.
c. d.
4. SOCIAL IDENTITY GROUPS AND MORAL PANICS
• 7 groups of social identity which moral
panics belong to:
1. Young, working class, violent males
2. School Violence and Guns/Bullying
3. Drugs and Drug dealers
4. Child abuse, satanic rituals &
pedophile registers
5. Violence and sex in the media
6. Welfare cheats and single mothers
7. Refugees and Asylum seekers.
5. NEW MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON MORAL PANICS
• “As the cyber community of Facebook
grows and becomes further integrated
into our daily lives, alongside this
grows the threat to our familiar ways of
living”. Loizov (Internet journal of
criminology)
9. HOW THE RISE IN MORAL
PANIC CASES IS AFFECTING
THE PUBLIC
CRITICISM ON MORAL PANIC
The term PANIC suggest irrationality and lack of control. Cohen (2012).
DISPROPORIONALITY: It is impossible to measure the appropriate
reaction to a certain action. Thibodeaux (2014).
The mass media has evolved since moral panics were introduced and
therefore what we define as panics should be revised. McRobbie,
Thronton ().
Research into moral panic fails to approach the term critically, and moral
panic is just accepted at face value. Jewkes ().
Moral panic is a fabrication of irrational middle class anxieties created to
defend the fear of the working class ‘mobs’. Thompson, Williams ().
10. MORAL PANICS CREATING A CORRUPTED SOCIETY?
POSITIVE
• Modern day society is a lot more
prepared for possible dangers.
“TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS,
LIKE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES
CAN BE VIEWED POSITIVELY, AS
INCREASING OPPURTUNITIES, OR
NEGATIVELY, AS A SOURCE OF
INCREASED RISK.”
NEGATIVE
• The public are living in a constant state
of fear and anxiety due to exaggerated
moral panics.
• The public become more prejudice, i.e
Islam fear, youth fear etc…
11. CONCLUSION
Media creates moral panics for own agenda and new media has only increased the amount of
mediums that can be used to create these scare mongering stories.
Receiving and sharing these moral panics are reactions to them online makes it easy for the public to
be more judgmental than if they were having a real life debate. New media has made it easier for
hatred toward certain social groups acceptable.
The way these stories are presented to us most often mask the truth of the situation, with my project I
wish to show the moral panic the public are presented with, and then show the truth about the social
situation highlighted. I will attempt to do this through a series of edited pictures accompanied by
animated newspaper headlines.
The idea of moral panic goes back to the 1800s, however the most popular definition is offered to us by Stanely Cohen (1972) in “Folk Devils and Moral Panic”, he claimed a moral panic is a “…condition, episode, person or group of persons that emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen, 1972). In modern day society moral panic can be defined as the media’s sensationalizing of stories to instil a level or fear and anxiety among the public. Reasons for this range from attempting to control society through propaganda style media, or more simple reasons like increasing readership. Cohen also created the term “FOLK DEVIL” which refers to a “a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviants, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems.” The pursuit of these folk devils then creates a moral panic. Moral panic has 5 distinct characteristics which include, Concern, Hostility, Consensus, Disproportionality, Volatility. There are a number of participatory groups involved in the creation moral panics: the public, the media, political figures, action groups and the police force.
A few examples of media heightened moral panics include the war on drugs in the 1970s, the emergence AIDS in the 1980s, the fear of satanic ritual abuse in the 1990s and most recently the panic surrounding human trafficking in the noughties. It is common for moral panics to focus in on one certain socio economic group, typical those within the working class level of society.
Cohen (2002) suggests that there are seven groups of social identity that moral panics can relate to, these are: Young, working class, violent males
School Violence and Guns/Bullying, Drugs and Drug dealers, Child abuse, satanic rituals & pedophile registers, Violence and sex in the media, Welfare cheats and single mothers and finally Refugees and Asylum seekers.
The increased use of Facebook and online news sources is creating a complete change in the way we mix and maintain social relationships. In turn this has changed the way we exchange information in our social circles and relationships. The widespread use of the internet opens a whole new form of public expression, and gives the means to facilitate large groups of people with potentially untrue or sensationalised stories. This raises various political and social problems as this is a direct aid to the creation of moral panics. Victoria Loizov explores the impact new media is having on the public “As the cyber community of Facebook grows and becomes further integrated into our daily lives, alongside this grows the threat to our familiar ways of living”. This suggests we are already beginning to change due to this new way we consume our information or news.
News stories are continuously being distorted and exaggerated to create moral panics. The public then begins to form stereotypes as their concerns regarding certain social group or situations heightens. This would suggest new medias excessive creating of moral panics has caused a decline in modern day society.
The website reason.com picked up on the increase in sensationalised moral panics and now runs a weekly competition inviting users to submit their craziest “moral panic” story. The tagline for the competition was “Come up with the opening sentence of the next ‘helpful warning’ Facebook post to go viral”. It must also be noted that the growing popularity of memes are helping moral panics, and subsequently misinformed opinions on the situations to go viral.
Kenneth Thompson discusses the distorted version of news moral panics in the media present us with “Are we in a post modern epoch of media culture in which the public sphere is more like a hall of mirrors where all that exists is a media reflection of other media representations, a word of simulations constituting a ‘hyperreality’ which is immune to rational critique… a representation through spectacle or public dramas”. Here he is basically saying that new media is blinding our view on real world issues, the public are not seeing the truth, what they are getting is a misrepresentation of the truth, manufactured to support a person or groups political or social agenda.
Cohen suggests the term panic has connotations of irrationality and a lack of control (Folk Devils and Moral Panic). Jarret Thibodeaux (2014) raises the issue of disproportionality, and how the moral panic criteria wrongly represents the level of harm and danger that comes with any social problem, it is impossible to estimate what the correct reaction to a particular action is, I.E Should we be anxious or not? Mc Robbie and Thronton believe that as the mass media has evolved since the introduction of moral panics, the way in which we label moral panics should also change, they state “… it is now time that every stage in the process of constructing a moral panic, as well as the social relations which support it, should be revised”. (McRobbie, Thronton: Rethinking moral panic). A British Criminlogist Yvonne Jewkes approaches the issue of morality surrounding moral panics. Jewkes believes that the research into moral panic avoids discussing the term critically as the concept of moral panic is simply accepted at face value. Jewkes claims the public are no longer able to distinguish between demonising certain minorities, and crimes which actually are offensive to human morality. This leads to the questioning of the validity of ‘moral panic’ and Thompson and Williams explore the validity of the term. They believe moral panic is nothing more than a fabrication of irrational middle anxieties regarding the work class ‘mobs’, and minority social groups. An example was used which showed a protest group of local parents demonstrating against the rehoming of sex offenders in their area. Thompson and Williams highlighted how the liberal press and moral panic critics demonization of the parents protest presented them to be just as irrational as the sex offenders. It was a demonstration to show how the media can basically make a moral panic out of any story.
There is very little research done in regards to the positive impact moral panic in the media, it is all focused on the negative impact this form of media reporting is having. New media, especially Facebook etc, are avoiding traditional means of regulation which is creating a sense of anxiety among the public as the effects of these new media changes have not yet been discovered, especially how being immersed in this media since birth will effect the youth of today. New and Multi Media is becoming a cause for moral panic in itself.
