fabricated the idea of moral panics in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), whilst Jock Young concentrated more on the correlation of deviance amplification and drug taking. The main feature of a moral panic is deviance amplification; this was looked at in more detail by Stanley Cohen (1972) in what he called the deviancy amplification spiral. Some examples of media moral panics include; internet pornography, violence in video games, immigration, single parents etc… Moral panics can affect
societal reactive mechanisms of surveillance, discipline, regulation, and punishment (Herdt 2009, p.1). Moral panic is seen to occur in the events where the media takes an ordinary event and presents it as extraordinary. The media creates a deviancy amplification spiral in the motion. The journalists and their supporters demonize the people who are thought to be wrong doers and portray them as a source of moral decline and social disintegration. The media spreads this news to the society in an overwhelming
One piece of research which focuses on this aspect is Stanley Cohen’s: Folk devils and moral panics published in 1972. Folk devils, is actually a term Cohan came up with during his research into subcultures, after the Easter Monday ‘fiasco’ in Clacton in 1964. The term Folk devils; refers to a person or thing, held to be a bad influence in society, whereas moral panic; is a feeling of fear which is spread amongst a large number of people, where ‘evil’ threatens their society. His book goes onto
By trying to explain what deviance is, you could say it is any type of behavior that violates what we call social norms (the accepted standard of behavior of social groups), but it is also something much broader and a lot more complex aspect within criminology itself, it is analyzed in order for people to try and understand the reasons behind why it actually happens. (Cliffsnotes.com, n.d.) Theories of deviance There are four main theories behind why deviance occurs: Differential-association
Throughout history and in contemporary Britain “a sequence of moral panics about ‘depraved youth’ has been a dominant and recurring feature of media representations of young people” (Muncie, 2004, p. 8), and as a result, the youth-crime nexus has undergone vast transformations in terms of the conception of ‘youth crime’ and its prevailing consequences (Omaji, 2003). In the post-war period, youthful ‘folk-devils’ were continually pinpointed by the media as the underlying source of public anxiety and
of Ronald Clark O’Bryan this man not only murdered his son, but he killed his son by poisoning his Halloween candy to collect the life insurance claim he recently bought on his children. Principle 2 states, “the media set in motion a ‘deviancy amplification spiral’ in which a moral discourse is established by journalists and various other authorities, opinion leaders and moral entrepreneurs, who collectively demonize the perceived wrong-doers as a source of moral decline and social disintegration”
Labelling theorists are interested in why and how some acts are seen to be criminal in the first place and the effects of being labelled criminal has on an individual rather than seeking the causes of their criminal behaviour. (Webb et al, 2009). They argue that no act is criminal until society labels it to be so. Therefore society has defined a crime to be ‘An action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by law’ (Oxford Dictionary, 2000) for example, stealing a car, or murder
As Nils Christie argued, crime is a property of the state (2004). As such, it can be defined by the same systems of ideals which influence the state. Crime statistics, which refer to a category of human acts that society view as deviant, can consequently be argued to be without objectivity (Dorling and Simpson, 1999). The statistics they provide are thus arguably not exact. To a certain extent one could infer they are reflections of society, of those who present the data and most importantly