Moral Panics

PROCESS OF MORAL PANICS:

  • Moral panic: an exaggerates overreaction by society to a perceived problem – usually driven or inspired by the media – where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all proportion to its real seriousness.

  • The media identify a group as a ‘folk devil’' or threat to societal values.

  • The media present the group in a negative stereotypical fashion and exaggerate the scale of the problem.

  • Moral entrepreneurs, editors, politicians, police chiefs, bishops and other ‘respectable’ people condemn the group and its behaviour.

  • Leads to a crackdown, self-fulfilling prophecy and amplification of the problem.

MODS AND ROCKERS:

  • The moral panic:

    • Disturbances between two groups of largely working class teenagers at English seaside resorts.

  • Group(s) identified as ‘folk devil’:

    • Mods and rockers.

  • Media’s stereotypical representation:

    • Exaggerated the numbers involved and the extent of the violence and damage.

    • The symbols of the mods and rockers – clothes, bikes and scooters, hairstyles, etc. – were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance.

    • Headlines were dramatic and even non-events were news – towns ‘held their breath’ for invasions that didn’t materialise.

  • Moral entrepreneurs condemnation:

    • Media used these symbols to link unconnected events and so bikers in other parts of the country who misbehaved could be seen as part of a bigger underlying problem.

  • Crackdown amplification:

    • Increased control response from the police and courts, leading to further marginalisation and stigmatisation.

    • As the media described these subcultures, more youths adopted these styles.

    • By emphasising their supposed differences, the media crystallised two distinct identities – encouraging polarisation and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

THE WIDER CONTEXT:

  • Cohen believes that moral panics occur at times of social change.

  • Post-war Britain was a time of new-found affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young.

  • This appeared to challenge the values of an older generation who had lived through hardship.

  • Argues that the moral panic was the result of boundary crisis – establishing where acceptable and unacceptable behaviour lay in a time of change.

  • The folk devil created by the media symbolises anxieties about social disorder.

THEORIES AND WIDER CONTEXT:

  • Functionalism:

    • Moral panics can be seen as a way of responding to the sense of anomie or normlessness caused by change.

    • By dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness and reasserts social controls when central values are threatened.

  • Neo-Marxist:

    • Hall et al: locate the role of moral panics in the context of capitalism.

    • The moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the British media in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism, divide the working class on racial grounds and legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule.

CRITICISMS OF MORAL PANICS:

  • It assumes that the societal response is a disproportionate overreaction – but who is to decide what’s a proportionate reaction, and what’s a panicky one? This relates to the left realist view that people’s fear of crime is in fact rational.

  • What turns the ‘amplifier’ on and off? Why are the media able to amplify some problems into a panic, but not others? Why do panics not go on increasing indefinitely once they’ve started?

  • Late modernity – do today’s media audiences, who are accustomed to ‘shock, horror’ stories, really react to panic to media exaggerations? McRobbie and Thornton argue that moral panics are now routine and have little impact. There’s also less consensus about what’s deviant, e.g single mothers would’ve been universally condemned 40 years ago. This makes it harder for the media to create moral panics.

CYBER-CRIME:

  • The arrival of new media often creates moral panics – horror comics, TV, cinema, videos, computer games.

  • Because of its speed of development and its global scale, the internet has caused a panic.

  • It has led to fears of cyber crime which Thomas and Loader define as ‘computer mediated activities’ that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks.

  • Jewkes: the internet gives opportunities for conventional crimes like fraud, and new crimes such as software piracy.

TYPES OF CYBER CRIME (JEWKES):

  • Cyber-pornography: includes porn involving minors, and opportunities for children to access porn on the net.

  • Cyber-trespass: crossing boundaries into others’ cyber property. It includes hacking and sabotage, such as spreading viruses.

  • Cyber-violence: doing psychological harm or inciting physical harm. Includes cyber-stalking and hate crimes against minority groups, as well as bullying by text.

  • Cyber-deception and theft: includes identity theft, ‘phishing’ and violation of intellectual property rights.

DIFFICULTIES OF CYBER CRIME:

  • The vast scale and global nature of cyber crime makes it hard to police due to the limited resources of the police and also the globalised nature, which poses problems of jurisdiction – in which country should someone be prosecuted for an internet offence? Police culture also gives cyber crime a low priority because it’s seen as lacking the excitement of more conventional policing.

ADVANTAGES OF TECHNOLOGY:

  • Helps police solve more crimes due to new ICT providing greater opportunities for surveillance and control of the population.

  • Jewkes: ICT permits routine surveillance through the use of CCTV cameras, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting and ‘smart’ identity cards, as well as the installation of listening devices called ‘carnivores’ at internet service providers to monitor email traffic.