Folk Devils And Moral Panics Analysis

The news media covers a lot of stories that they know that people want to hear. Occasionally some of these stories cause for people to go into a panic thinking that their life is going to dramatically change all because of what was reported on the news. This would be called a media panic or also known as moral panic. This is when stylized folk devils are presented as representatives of an acute threat to the hegemonic values associated with social order. Stanley Cohen was one person that analyzed the idea of moral panic. Cohen’s thesis of his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics argues that moral panics are generated by the media, or by particular interest-groups using the media to publicize their concerns. News media has the ability to control

Satanic ritual abuse is sexual abuse during satanic ceremonies that included such ghastly practices as blood-drinking, cannibalism, and human sacrifices. Something of this nature can cause moral panic because of the fact that children are were possibly being harmed by adults that parents trusted. Pertaining to their children, parents tend to react especially when others have reacted as well. The media only helps to feed them into their reactions. ‘When the official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of events is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered’, and when the media representations universally stress ‘sudden and dramatic’ increases and ‘novelty’, above and beyond that which a sober, realistic appraisal could sustain, then we believe it is appropriate to speak of the beginnings of a moral panic. As more and more people feed into the coverage of the news media, there’s a wide spread of panic that could go nationwide as well as into other countries. These reactions cause a bigger issue than what the original issue was considering the fact that the “Satanic Day Care” situation wasn’t even