- Moral - something you believe to be right
- Panic - sense of distress or worry
- Moral Panic - when something happens in society that lots of people disagree with
- Moral - concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour
- Panic - sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behaviour
- Moral Panic - the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order
Mods & Rockers
Clash of Ideologies
Rockers: leather jackets-motorbikes-tattoos-punk-piercings
Mods: suits-scooters-smart-clean-neat
Through the creation of the internet more identities have been created.
The media predominantly controls what we see, however Web 2.0, allows us to have our own voice.
60's -
Teenagers in the 60's had time, money and freedom that they had not had before.
The negative image that was created of teenagers in the 60's is what has been carried on in the media. Therefore this negative image has been reinforced.
Mods v Rockers
Two different groups of people, had different ideologies.
Didn't like each other.
The report of the Brighton Beach riots in the 1964 by the media changed how those groups of people were perceived by the rest of society. (maybe forever)
Stigma attached.
The media created a folk devil/scapegoat in the teenager.
These words are what the class described pictures of the Brighton Beach Riots as:
- violent
- rebellious
- disruptive
- immature
The press presented young people as folk devils because they chose to present them negatively.
This created a moral panic.
The teenagers involved in the riots didn't actually have that much freedom. his was the only way they had to represent themselves. We now have the internet as a way to represent ourselves.
The Press & Their Message
What actually happened compared to how the press reported it, is very interesting.
They over exaggerated events, demonised teens, made them out to be more violent and aggressive.
The press encouraged the people to fight so they had interesting stories to write.
The whole event was very influential in how teenagers are not represented.
In the newspapers that reported the incident the riots were described as:
- vermin
- mutated locusts
- sawdust Caesurs
- odious loutes
- internal enemies
- grubby hoards of loutes and sluts
How the press report a moral panic -
- Exaggeration & Distortion - 'over reporting' emotive language, repetition of false stories
- Prediction - if it has happened once before it is bound to happen again
- Symbolisation - signs represent a moral panic for example interviews that are dramatised and over exaggerated to let the audience hear what they want.
'a moral panic occurs when a condition, episode, person, or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.'
What Does A Moral Panic Consist Of?
- Concern - awareness of a negative impact on society
- Hostility - towards the group to separate them from society and to folk-devil 'them' from 'us'
- Consensus - a wide group of society accept the threat of the group in question
- Disproportionality - the action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed (exaggeration of crime in the media)
- Volatility - they can easily disappear as soon as they came, and move on to a new topic.
- Jimmy Saville and 80's entertainers
- Social workers and lack of capability, e.g Baby P
- Drug Culture
- London Riots
- Video games and violent behaviour
- Trolling
Cohen states teenagers are seen as folk devils
Moral panics are a snap shot of time in which the majority of society place a blame
The mods and rockers were seen as a moral panic as teenagers were 'out of control'
A moral panic consists of 5 key elements to be believable and impact on society
The press manipulate messages to create moral panics
The way the press report a story is not always true or fair, we live in a blame culture society so we accept this for media reporting.
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