BBC presentation

Moral Panic

Moral panic - 'Abstract concept used to make sense of "irritational public hysteria". Public and academic debate on moral panic works on the assumption that the media plays a significant role in determining the characteristics of a moral panic. Signifies complex processes that shape public perceptions of a perceived threat to the Moral code of society.

Processual model:
Attends to the process of a moral panic. 7 defined stages (Stanley Cohen 'Folk Devils and moral panics' 1973)

• Emergence - when a form of behaviour becomes percieved as a threat.
• media inventory - explanation of threat is minipulated by media (disortion exaggeration)
• Moral entrepreneur - groups organsisations speak out and offer soloutions.
• Experts - soically accredited rxperts who disgnose soloutions.
• Coping resolutions - reaction of the media, moral entrepreneurs and experts leads to legal reform.
• Fading away - the condition dissapears sumerging of becoms more visable.
• Legacy - a moral panic have a long term effect and creates big changes in social policy, the law oe society's views of itself.

Attributional model: Eric Goode and Nachman.

Ben Y study - "moral panics: the social constrcution of deviance (1994)

5 elements or criteria distinguish attributes of moral panics:

1) Concern - aheightend level of concern, measurable through opionion polls etc...

2) hostility - increases hostility to a group or catagory - seen as 'enemy' to respectable society (folk Devils)

3) Consenusus - a substained segament of society agrees that the threat is cause by 'wrong doers'

4) disproportinality - the reaction by the public is out of proportion to the cultural harm.

5) Volatility - the idea that moral panics are volatile by nature, erupt quickly but also often subside quietly - each episode cannot be sustained for long.