Youth & Moral panics Flashcards
Words used to describe young people?
Thugs, sick, feral, yobs
When do boys receive sympathetic news coverage?
Teen boys who met violent/untimely deaths
Percentage of teen boys that felt they are represented negatively?
85%
Wayne et al
- Conducted content analysis
- One dimensional picture that encourages fear
- Distracts from the real problems young people face
- Scapegoat
Negative youth representations in media
Knife crime, gang fights, antisocial and criminal behaviour, underage drinking/drugs, teen pregnancy
Positive youth representations in media
Athletic awards, charity work, climate change
Goode and Ben-Yehuda
1) Concerns
The behaviour of a specific group/event cause anxiety in the public
Goode and Ben-Yehuda
2) Consensus
Perpetuators are seen as an enemy creating a them and us feeling
Goode and Ben-Yehuda
3)
Perpetuators are seen as an enemy creating a them and us feeling
Goode and Ben-Yehuda
4) Disproportionality
The punishments are greater because of the police and magistrates being sensitised
Goode and Ben-Yehuda
5) Volatility
The moral panic comes and goes easily
Youth are portrayed in the media as a…
Social problem
The youth are constructed as…
Folk devils
Folk devils cause a…
Moral panic
Examples of moral panics
- Ecstacy (MDMA, ravers, Sarah Thornton)
- Chavs (Owen Jones)
- Mods & Rockers (Cohen)
- Islamaphobia
Who did Stan Cohen study?
The Mods & Rockers
What did the press do after the fight (M&R)
- Exaggerated and distorted events
- Used words like “riot”/”battle” to describe minor events
- Because there was a slow news day
What did the press increasingly criticise about the Mods and Rockers?
Their hairstyles, scooters and moterbikes until only this ‘look’ was adopted by young people associating with these “folk devils”
Deviancy amplification
The deviance has been made worse through the impact of the media
What does Cohn state the reasons for exaggeration of the press are?
- They need to create news
- The existence of the structures of the news making progress (scapegoats)
A weakness of the theory
X Moral panics take away the free will of the person making the decision
Journalists have…
New values
- Galtung & Ruge
- Negativity = bad news, violence or death is involved
Jock Young - Hippies
- Press started a moral panic about drugs being bad for society/individuals due to negative media attention and policing on drug use
- Drugs were used secretively - subculture
- Recreational drug users were drawn into close proximity to heavy users, resulting in the use of harder drugs e.g. heroin
Stuart Hall ‘Policing crisis’
- Economic recession, increased unemployment
- Government needed a scapegoat to distract from failing capitalist system
- Increase in ‘mugging’
- Media created moral panic/’folk devils’
- Responded by putting more police in areas
- Public’s attention on black criminality rather than the deeper problems with society
What perspective is Stuart Hall from?
Marxist / interactionism
McRobbie and Thornton criticisms
- Frequency = People fail to become panicked anymore
- Context = Too fragmented to scapegoat
- Reflexivity = Try and generate moral panic but media is aware and refuses
- Difficulty = good&bad is different for different people
- Rebound = Wary of starting in case it backfires
Mods & Rockers timeline
1) Fight - Clacton
2) Exaggerate the event - Moral panic
3) Mods & Rockers become folk devils (group to be afraid)
4) Bigger fight in Brighton - More arrests/harsher sentences
Deviant amplification
