Moral Panic:
- Abstract concept used to make sense of 'irrational public hysteria'
- Public & academic debate on moral panic works on the assumption that the media plays a significant role in determing the characterics of moral panic
- Signifies complex processes that shape public perspections of a perceived threat to the moral code of society
Processual Model
- Attends to process of a moral panic
- 7 defined stages ( Stanley Cohen "Folk Devils & Moral Panic 1973)
- Emergence: When a form of behaviour becomes perceived as a threat
- Media Inventory: explaination of threat is manipulated by media ( distortion, exaggeration)
- Moral entrepreneurs: groups pr organisation speak out & offer solution
- Experts: Socially accrediated experts ( government, police) who diagnose solution
- Coping & resolution: reaction of the media, moral entrepreneur & experts lead to legal reform
- Fading away: the condition disappears, submerges or deteriotes & become more visible
- Legacy: a moral panic can have long lasting effect or create big changes in social policy, the law or society's view itself
Attributionsl Model: Erich Goode & Nachman
- Ben Yehuda's study 'Moral Panics: The social construction of deviance (1994)
- Claims those working in the media, political institutions & the legal system. Impact on moral panics through 'claims making'
- 5 elements or criteria distinguish attributes of moral panic
- Concern: a heightened level of concern, measurable through opinion, polls etc
- Hostility:Increased hostility to a group or category seen as 'enemy' to respectable soceity (folk devil)
- Consensus: a substantial segment of society agrees that the threat is real & caused by 'wrongdoers'
- Disproportionality: the reaction by the public is out of proportion to the actual harm
- Volatility: the idea that moral panics are volatile by nature, erupt quickly but also often subside quietly. Each episode cannot be sustained for long
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