Moral panic

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Moral panic is a sociological term, coined by Stanley Cohen, meaning a reaction by a group of people based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. It has also been more broadly defined as an "episode, condition, person or group of persons" that has in recent times been "defined as a threat to societal values and interests."[1] They are byproducts of controversies that produce arguments and social tension, or aren't easily discussed as some of these moral panics are taboo to many people.[2] Characterization of the group reaction as a moral panic requires a presumption that the group's perceptions are unfounded or exaggerated.

These reactions are often fueled by media coverage or propaganda around a social issue, although semi-spontaneous moral panics do occur. Mass hysteria can be an element in these movements, but moral panic is different from mass hysteria in that a moral panic is specifically framed in terms of morality and is usually expressed as outrage rather than fear. Moral panics (as defined by Cohen) revolve around a perceived threat to a value or norm held by a society normally stimulated by glorification within the mass media or 'folk legend' within societies. Panics have a number of outcomes, with one being the certification to the players within the panic that what they are doing appears to warrant observation by mass media and therefore may push them further into the activities that led to the original feeling of moral panic.

The influences and behaviors of young people are common themes in many moral panics.

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[edit] Origins and use of the term

The term was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 to describe media coverage of Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. A factor in moral panic is the deviancy amplification spiral, the phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events.

While the term moral panic is relatively recent, some social scientists point to the Middletown studies, first conducted in 1925, as containing the first in-depth study of this phenomenon.[citation needed] In these studies, researchers found that community and religious leaders in an American town condemned then-new technology such as the radio and automobile for promoting immoral behavior.[citation needed]

Many sociologists have pointed out the differences between definitions of a moral panic for American and British sociologists. Kenneth Thompson has said that American sociologists tend to emphasize psychological factors whereas the British portray moral panics as crises of capitalism.[3]

In Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978), Stuart Hall and his colleagues studied the reaction to the importation into the UK of the heretofore American phenomenon of mugging. Employing Cohen's definition of moral panic, Hall et al. theorized that the "rising crime rate equation" has an ideological function relating to social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.[4]

[edit] Characteristics

Moral Panics have several distinct features:

  1. Panic/anxiety: This is often very intense and there seems to be no problem greater than the subject of the panic.
  2. Short lived: The Panic lasts for only a few months at the most and can recur.
  3. Emotive language and images: Phrases such as "monsters", "decay", and "crisis" are used to emphasize the acuteness of the problem. Medical language can also be used out of context such as the word "epidemic".
  4. Case Studies: These are often dramatic and unrepresentative.
  5. Statistics: Often misused or written in such a way that makes the reader think the problem is worse than it is; for example, "400% greater" may mislead some into thinking that something is 400 times higher rather than 5 times.
  6. Demonization of a group: Sometimes the chosen group does not even exist[citation needed] and those that do are mostly socially or economically marginal. Often the media can portray a group in a way that they don't really exist and the group will eventually live up to the stereotype created for them.
  7. A Media led or generation phenomenon: Printed to start with and then TV and radio follow amplifying the panic which is then reflected elsewhere such as politics. Even in Victorian society moral panics were seen to be adopted by the media in the form of pamphlets, handbills and newspapers.[5]

[edit] Examples of use of the term

Satanic ritual abuse is regarded by some[6][7] as a series of moral panics originating in the U.S., and spreading to other English-speaking countries and the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s.

Persecutions of individuals or especially of groups have been cited as moral panics,[neutrality disputed] for example, anti-Semitic pogroms, Stalinist purges, the witch-hunts of Renaissance Europe, the McCarthyist public interrogations and blacklisting of Communists[6] in the US during the 1950s, and various actions in Western countries post September 11th affecting Arabs, Muslims, or those mistaken for them.

Jewkes in 2004 described reactions to pedophilia as "the most significant moral panic of the last two decades".[8] She says the introduction of Megan's law in 1996 gave campaigners in the U.S. something to lobby for.[9]

Some critics find moral panic in support for the U.S. War on Drugs. For example a Royal Society of Arts commission concluded that "the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, ... is driven more by 'moral panic' than by a practical desire to reduce harm."[10] Similarly, support for video game and media regulation has been linked to moral panic.[11]

A 2003 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show claimed that there was a widespread fashion among teenage girls to take part in elaborate sex orgies named rainbow parties. Although fantastic from the outset, and despite the fact that it was never substantiated that even a single "rainbow party" had taken place before, nor even that a corresponding "urban myth" had been circulating among teenagers, the claim caused popular reverberations that have been described as "moral panic"[12].

[edit] Criticism

In Folk Devils and Moral Panic, Cohen outlines some of the criticisms that have arisen in response to moral panic theory. One of these is of the term "panic" itself, as it has connotations of irrationality and a lack of control. Cohen maintains that "panic" is a suitable term when used as an extended metaphor. Another criticism is that of disproportionality. The problem with this argument is that there is no way to measure what a proportionate reaction should be to a specific action.[13] Others have criticized Cohen's work stating that not all the folk devils expressed in his work are vulnerable or unfairly maligned. Jewkes has also raised issue with the term 'morality' and how it is accepted unproblematically in 'moral panics'.[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cohen, Stanley (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Mac Gibbon and Kee, p. 9. ISBN 0-415-26712-9.
  2. ^ Kuzma, Cindy. "Rights and Liberties: Sex, Lies, and Moral Panics". AlterNet. September 28, 2005. Accessed March 27, 2007.
  3. ^ Thompson, S., in, Critcher, C., Critical readings: Moral Panics in the Media, (Berkshire, Open university press, 2006)
  4. ^ Hall, S., et al. 1978. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 0333220617 (paperback) ISBN 0333220609 (hardbound)
  5. ^ Davies, S. Moral Panics and the history of Crime. Lecture, October 15, 2007, Manchester Metropolitan University
  6. ^ a b Goode, E. and N. Ben-Yahuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell. 57-65; 112. ISBN 063118905X (paperback) ISBN 0631189041 (hardcover)
  7. ^ Jenkins, P. 1998. Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p 230-231. ISBN 0300109636 (paperback) ISBN 0300073879 (hardcover)
  8. ^ a b Jewkes, Y., Media and Crime, (London, Sage, 2004), pp. 76-77.
  9. ^ Jewkes, Y., Media and Crime, (London, Sage, 2004), pp. 94-95.
  10. ^ The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (2007) Drugs – facing facts: The report of the RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, p. 15. Retrieved on: January 4, 2008.
  11. ^ Byrd, Patrick (2007). It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt: The Effectiveness of Proposed Video Game Regulation. Retrieved on 2007-03-19.
  12. ^ NY Times Article, 6/30/05
  13. ^ Cohen, S. (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Oxford: Martin Robertson, pp. xxvi-xxxi

[edit] External links