Youth & Moral panics

Question 1

Words used to describe young people?

Answer 1

Thugs, sick, feral, yobs

Question 2

When do boys receive sympathetic news coverage?

Answer 2

Teen boys who met violent/untimely deaths

Question 3

Percentage of teen boys that felt they are represented negatively?

Answer 3

85%

Question 4

Wayne et al

Answer 4

• Conducted content analysis
• One dimensional picture that encourages fear
• Distracts from the real problems young people face
• Scapegoat

Question 5

Negative youth representations in media

Answer 5

Knife crime, gang fights, antisocial and criminal behaviour, underage drinking/drugs, teen pregnancy

Question 6

Positive youth representations in media

Answer 6

Athletic awards, charity work, climate change

Question 7

Goode and Ben-Yehuda

1) Concerns

Answer 7

The behaviour of a specific group/event cause anxiety in the public

Question 8

Goode and Ben-Yehuda

2) Consensus

Answer 8

Perpetuators are seen as an enemy creating a them and us feeling

Question 9

Goode and Ben-Yehuda

3)

Answer 9

Perpetuators are seen as an enemy creating a them and us feeling

Question 10

Goode and Ben-Yehuda

4) Disproportionality

Answer 10

The punishments are greater because of the police and magistrates being sensitised

Question 11

Goode and Ben-Yehuda

5) Volatility

Answer 11

The moral panic comes and goes easily

Question 12

Youth are portrayed in the media as a…

Answer 12

Social problem

Question 13

The youth are constructed as…

Answer 13

Folk devils

Question 14

Folk devils cause a…

Answer 14

Moral panic

Question 15

Examples of moral panics

Answer 15

• Ecstacy (MDMA, ravers, Sarah Thornton)
• Chavs (Owen Jones)
• Mods & Rockers (Cohen)
• Islamaphobia

Question 16

Who did Stan Cohen study?

Answer 16

The Mods & Rockers

Question 17

What did the press do after the fight (M&R)

Answer 17

• Exaggerated and distorted events
• Used words like “riot”/”battle” to describe minor events
• Because there was a slow news day

Question 18

What did the press increasingly criticise about the Mods and Rockers?

Answer 18

Their hairstyles, scooters and moterbikes until only this ‘look’ was adopted by young people associating with these “folk devils”

Question 19

Deviancy amplification

Answer 19

The deviance has been made worse through the impact of the media

Question 20

What does Cohn state the reasons for exaggeration of the press are?

Answer 20

• They need to create news

- The existence of the structures of the news making progress (scapegoats)

Question 21

A weakness of the theory

Answer 21

X Moral panics take away the free will of the person making the decision

Question 22

Journalists have…

Answer 22

New values

• Galtung & Ruge
• Negativity = bad news, violence or death is involved

Question 23

Jock Young - Hippies

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

Stuart Hall ‘Policing crisis’

Answer 24

• 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

Question 25

What perspective is Stuart Hall from?

Answer 25

Marxist / interactionism

Question 26

McRobbie and Thornton criticisms

Answer 26

• 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

Question 27

Mods & Rockers timeline

Answer 27

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