Cohen (Introduction)

Question 1

What are cohen’s three overlapping sources for this review?

Answer 1

1. the stuff itself (30 years of moral panics)
   – clusters of reactions that look like moral panics
2. public and media discourse
   –first order description, reflexive comment or criticism
3. Meta view from academic subjects

Question 2

What are two main assumptions of Moral panics?

Answer 2

1. attribution of moral panic label means the things extent has been exaggerated in itself (compared with more reliable sources)
2. attribution of moral panic label means the things extent has been exaggerated compared to other, more serious problems

Question 3

Explain these traits of Moral panics?

New

Old

Damaging in themselves

Warning signs

Transparent

Opaque

Answer 3

New: dormant, but creeping up moral horizon

Old: camouflaged versions of traditional well-known evils

Warning signs: Damaging in themselves but warning sign of a much more prevalent condition

Transparent: Anyone can see what’s happening

Opaque: experts must explain perils hidden behind what appears harmless

Question 4

What were most crowd scenes organized on?

Answer 4

ethnic lines

Because there weren’t really subgroups partaking in general crime. (not like Mods and Rockers)

Question 5

Explain the James Bulger case:

Answer 5

2 year old walked a few miles and killed by two 10 year olds

– Britain was starting to freak out thinking theres a new generation of violent children

– Worried they might have been influenced by media, so scrambling to get rid of the violent movie they supposedly watched (no record of it happening)

Question 6

Explain the Steven Lawrence case:

Answer 6

18 year old black youth

– Taunted with racial abuse by group of 5-6 white youth
–stabbed him and he died

But this wasn’t turned into a moral panic despite the clearly communicated lack of police involvement, no charges, and not finding the offenders.

Why?

Public attention flipped from victim to police, and police aren’t suitable folk devils

Also right wing papers directly aided police

And lacked a suitable victim: someone u identify with, who could be anybody (not inner city black males)

Finally institutionalized racism and its effect on the broader society

Question 7

Explain the moral panic around gun violence:

Answer 7

When school shootings first started becoming popular (late 1990’s) it sparked up a panic

“how did this happen, and how can we prevent it from happening elsewhere?”

if this happened in unremarkable place like Columbine, this could happen anywhere

Question 8

Explain the moral panic around drugs:

(Leah Betts)

Answer 8

Moral panics about drugs have been consistent for years = evil pusher and vulnerable user

Betts took a ecstasy tablet in London club, collapsed and went into a coma
– Spread into panic about the evil pushers
– “it could be your child

She died two days later

Parents were respectable too, and disagreeing with their avid distain for pushers would be to invalidate grief

Question 9

Explain Moral panics around child abuse, satanic rituals, and paedophile (pedophile) registers

Answer 9

Chilling denial about child abuse within family homes (same with pedophile priests)

Mid 1980’s = highly publicized child deaths under more ‘ordinary’ circumstances

Around 120 children in 87 were diagnosed with being sexually abused by families

Also stories about satanic cult at this time, harming children

Little girl was killed, and led to a series of papers publishing sex offenders (and calling for all offenders info to be public)

Question 10

Explain the moral panic around: sex, violence, and blaming the media:

Answer 10

Moral panics about the alleged harmful effects of popular media

General panic: exposure to this triggers violent behavior

Question 11

Explain the moral panic around Welfare cheats and single mothers:

Answer 11

Belief significant number of welfare claims were fraudulent.

Unmarried mothers = folk devils because depended on welfare rather then a male breadwinner
– Described as getting pregnant for extra handouts

Question 12

Explain the moral panic around refugees and asylum seekers: flooding our country flooding our services:

Answer 12

Governments start with census (let as little refugees in as possible)

Then: these people lie to get in

Then: Need to use tests of credibility

This is different from his other panics because: Basic uninterrupted line of constant hostility
– problem is also caused by global political changes (and British government legitimizes public hostility)

(openly hostile level of bigotry)

Question 13

Why does rate X of condition Y generate a moral panic in one country but not in another with the same condition? These factors:

What is Concern

What is Hostility

What is Consensus

What is Disproportionality

What is Volatility

Answer 13

(i) Concern (rather than fear) about
the potential or imagined threat;

(ii) Hostility – moral outrage
towards the actors (folk devils) who embody the problem and agencies (naïve social workers, spin-doctored politicians) who are ‘ultimately’ responsible (and may become folk devils themselves);

(iii) Consensus – a widespread agreement (not necessarily total) that the threat exists, is serious and that ‘something should
be done’. The majority of elite and influential groups, especially
the mass media, should share this consensus.

(iv) Disproportionality
– an exaggeration of the number or strength of the cases, in
terms of the damage caused, moral offensiveness, potential risk
if ignored. Public concern is not directly proportionate to objective harm.

(v) Volatility – the panic erupts and dissipates suddenly
and without warning.

Question 14

What theories were used when making “Folk Devils and Moral Panics”

Answer 14

Folk Devils and Moral Panics used labelling theory, cultural politics and critical sociology
- ppl who study this today don’t have to engage with the mixup

Question 15

What is Social Constructionism? (one of the newer better theories ppl can use)

Answer 15

is a well-developed model for studying the contested claims that are made – by victims, interest groups, social movements, professionals and politicians – in the construction of new social problem categories.

Google: suggests our knowledge and reality are shaped by societal agreements

Examples: : drunken driving,
hate crime,
stalking,
environmental problems,
psychiatric categories such as PTSD
(Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and various dependencies,

eating disorders and
learning disorders

Question 16

What is Media and cultural studies? (one of the newer better theories ppl can use)

Answer 16

Media used to appear in any of these three roles with Moral Panics:
1. setting the agenda

2. transmitting the images
3. Breaking the silence (Making claims)

NOW:
Development in

Question 17

What does Cohen say his weakest point in the book is?

Answer 17

the link between moral panics and folk devils
– He used: y touched the thin
idea of media-induced deviancy amplifi cation. This is not causation in the constructionist sense – moral panics ‘cause’ folk devils by labelling more actions and people – but causation in the positivist sense and without the inverted commas

 -- Later cognitive models would have been much more plausible

Question 18

What is ‘virtual vigilantism’?

Answer 18

Contrast between
dangerous predators and vulnerable innocents

Seen in ‘tabloid justice’ (infotainment stories)

Question 19

What is Risk? (one of the newer better theories ppl can use)

Answer 19

The ‘risk society’ – in Beck’s well-known formulation – combines the
generation of risk with elaborated levels of risk management plus disputes about how this management is managed

Reflections on risk are now absorbed into a wider culture of insecurity, victimization and fear

Risk society paves way for new moral panics

Allocation of blame is intrinsic to moral panics

Question 20

Criticisms of Moral Panic Theory: “Why Panics”

Answer 20

term ‘panic’ has caused unnecessary trouble
– Brings idea of frenzied mob
– Connotation of irrationality

Reactions of These ‘technical’ disasters are not homogenous like moral panics
Criteria: drama,
emergency and crisis;
exaggeration;
cherished values threatened;
an object of concern,
anxiety and hostility;
evil forces or people
to be identified and stopped;
the eventual sense of the episodic
and transitory, etc

Question 21

Explain issues with disproportionality and volatility

Answer 21

disproportionality:
- conservatives complain that moral panic theorists use disproportionality
in a highly selective way that barely hides their left liberal political
agenda
Volatility:
- from radicals to whom
the assumption of volatility is not solid or political enough

Question 22

Criticisms of Moral Panic Theory: Disproportionality

Answer 22

usage of the term moral panic, so this argument starts, implies that societal reaction is disproportionate to the actual
seriousness

Objection = But we don’t have the objective criteria to assess if it is disproportionate

Refutation =But we can. Ex if 200 asylum seekers entered country, then it was spread that ‘they’ are flooding the country, that would be disproportionate (We can use empirical claims - all open to scrutiny)

Question 23

Criticisms of Moral Panic Theory: Volatility

Answer 23

Argument= Discrete and volatile moral panics might indeed once have existed but they have now been replaced by a generalized moral
stance, a permanent moral panic resting on a seamless web of social anxieties
Basically: permanent moral panic
- Bigger crises displaced onto smaller targets (towards marginal groups and deviance)

Role of media: reproducing the dominant ideology

Refutation = A panic, by definition is temporary
–Successful moral panics owe their appeal to their ability to find points of resonance with wider anxieties

–The volatility issue needs careful steering. If the idea of panic
is domesticated under the dull sociological rubric of ‘collective behaviour’, the political edge of the concept is blunted

Question 24

Criticisms of Moral Panic Theory: Good and Bad Moral Panics?

Answer 24

Liberals and Conservatives use “moral panics” differently

In both cases, the point was to expose social reaction not just as over-reaction
in some quantitative sense, but

first, as tendentious (that is, slanted
in a particular ideological direction) and

second, as misplaced or
displaced (that is, aimed – whether deliberately or thoughtlessly – at a target which was not the ‘real’ problem)

s. All of us cultural
workers – busily constructing social problems, making claims and
setting public agendas – think that we are stirring up ‘good’ moral panics