Moral Panic Notes - Brief summary of theory and criticism.
So read widely,think for yourself and look at lots of past papers. Assess the usefulness of the concept of moral panic. (synoptic link to sociological theories) Introduction. The concept of moral panic was created by Stan Cohen in his landmark study, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, published in the 1960s.
A moral panic is a disproportional and hostile social reaction to a condition, person or group defined as a threat to societal values, involving stereotypical media representations and leading to demands for greater social control and creating a spiral of reactions (Murji, 2006).
The Mass Media play an important role in developing labels by which social problems are publicly recognised. In times of social and economic crisis, the media play an important part in the creation of 'folk devils' around which moral panics develop, generally in the form of 'scapegoating'.A folk devil is a person or group that is regarded as disruptive or dangerous, for example, football.
So, the argument put forward by this essay proposes that whilst there are criticisms of moral panics in the surround of contemporary culture, the conclusions that can be made from relevant analyses point not towards the eradication of the moral panic concept but rather towards its development so as to account for the inherent features of contemporary society.
Moral panic is both a public and political response to an exaggeration or distortion of the threat posed to society by some allegedly harmful individual or group. More specifically, moral panic.
In the second half of 1744, a moral panic about street robberies gripped London. The article argues that moral panics of the modern law and order variety are evident as early as the mid-eighteenth.
Moral Panics: Reconsidering Journalism’s Responsibilities 395 The concept of moral panics stems from Stanley Cohen’s work in the early 1970s around delinquency, youth cultures and sub-cultures, as well as football hooliganism. Cohen, a sociologist who is credited with coining the phrase moral panic, wrote one.