I don't know how many people see the constant narrative about the threat posed by young Islamic fundamentalists in the media in the same way as I do, hyperbole, but I do feel that people should be more educated on the techniques many of the less reputable news sources employ in order to sway public opinion in a direction that fits their ideology.
Rather than write something new on the subject, here is an early essay, one which I suspect was more about getting people up to speed than anything else, from my degree studies which highlights some important issues I have with much of the media and its current spotlight on 'radical Islam'. Most, if not all' of what is written below in the essay can easily be observed in the everyday narrative of politicians, the media, and the audience, with regards to this new threat from Islamists.
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The aim of this essay will be to outline and explain what a moral panic is and how it goes from the early incidents that get picked up by the media and its transformation into a national issue. The essay will focus on how the moral panics in the mass media help us make sense of the role that the media plays in the wider society, I will do this by making reference to studies conducted into moral panics and by analysing the effects they had on the society at the time.
A ‘moral panic’ is the creation of a deep concern around a group or practise in the media; this is usually something that has been blown out of proportion by the media after one or two incidents having happened. The term ‘moral panic’ is used to describe the reaction to a particular subculture or group in society by the media; these panics amplify the generally small scale problems that these groups cause. Jenkins as cited in Macionis and Plummer states that “although there is often massive concern over serial killers, they are in fact very rare indeed, and serial killings have remained at roughly the same low rate for 100 years.” (Jenkins cited in Macionis, Plummer: pp. 777) This amplification of the incidents leads to the creation of these groups as ‘folk devils’. These moral panics focus upon groups, or individuals, that are perceived to be against the traditional norms of the society, and serve to amplify the hysteria surrounding them further in the media narrative. The media play the most important role in creating the ‘moral panic’ in this way, by taking the initial small incidents, sensationalising the stories surrounding them, and creating these ‘folk devils’.
In the book ‘folk devils and moral panics’ Cohen observed that societies sometimes undergo periods of time where they are subjected to an increase in moral panics, these can often be brought upon by fears that something is beginning to become a threat to the traditional values of that society. He states that these moral panics are often “associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle class or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent.” (Cohen: 9). This study was conducted in the 60’s and was concerned with the media portrayal of a series of events that occurred, over a small number of bank holiday weekends, in some seaside towns around England between two youth subcultures. The study looked at the way that the media was sensationalising the stories and reports of violence between the Mods and the Rockers, in it Cohen explains why the media choose to pick up and distort events in a way that creates a moral panic. Cohen claims that an important measurement to understand how a society (both the public and those in power positions) would react to deviant behaviour is the way in which the information is received about the deviancy taking place. He means by this that differing societies will react to a phenomena in different ways due to the way that each individual will receive that information, Cohen states that in our industrial society the information we receive has usually already been processed by a third party, such as the mass media in the form of newspaper reporters or journalists. This means that the news has been bent and shaped by those individuals or organisations to fit what they define as being ‘news’, this would often lead to the misreporting of the incidents and would shape the public’s opinion in a distorted manner. Erikson states “a considerable portion of what we call “news” is devoted to reports about deviant behaviour and its consequences” (Erikson cited in Cohen, 17). The emphasis on what is considered to be deviant forms of behaviour being reported in the news tells us that society uses the media to reinforce the norms that the society values as being important to the everyday live and the continued harmony of those within the society. In this sense you could see the media as being an agent of tertiary socialisation, and that the society as a whole uses it to be told what are acceptable forms of behaviour, and to show the society what the stereotypical devils look like, who they are, and what behaviour they get up to.
In this paragraph I am going to focus on why the media focuses on particular phenomenons and in the process create ‘moral panics’ and ‘folk devils’. The media often pick up on these stories of crime or delinquency because they are perceived to be newsworthy, this newsworthiness stems from many places, “there are built in factors, ranging from the individual newsman’s intuitive hunch about what constitutes a ‘good story’, through precepts such as ‘give the public what it wants’, to structured ideological biases, which predispose the media to make a certain event into news.” (Cohen: 45) This would suggest that the role the media plays in choosing the events that become moral panics, by reporting on them, is complex, in that a newspaper or news programme may over-hype a certain event as they believe that this dramatic story, is what the public wants to read or hear, or that the media outlet wants to fit a phenomenon or event into a category to reinforce the organisations own interests. In this way the media play a role in shaping attitudes of the public by escalating a fear within the wider society that these events are commonplace or that they will start to become a more frequent occurrence in the landscape of that society. In the article ‘Suffer Little Children: Child Abuse in Families’ it reports that, “Public recognition of sexual abuse in families scarcely existed until the events in Cleveland in the spring and summer of 1987” (La Fontaine 1990; Kitzinger 1996, cited in Critcher 2003 pp. 84). The article explains that the Daily Mail's initial headline for the story. when they first broke the news of child abuse. was ‘Hand Over Your Children, Council Orders Parents Of 200 Youngsters’. This story was picked up upon by other news outlets and as such the story almost immediately became a ‘moral panic’. This coverage of the events in Middlesbrough Franklin and Parton wrote that it was “extensive and without precedent” (Critcher: 86) as the length of the ‘moral panic’ over the child abuse lasted for a year. The reporting of these sexual abuse cases sided largely with those people who held traditional values within the society, these tended to be males, and a female Doctor at the hospital that these cases were being reported from, named Dr. Higgs, was presented to the public by the media as a ‘scapegoat’. This highlighting of Dr. Higgs, who was reported as a feminist, an Australian and therefore holding different values to British society, and for having a househusband, (Critcher 2003) as being the guilty person in this ‘moral panic’ gave the public a group which went against the norms of society. This meant that “the spectre of feminism becomes the folk devils” (Nava 1998:105 cited in Critcher 2003 pp. 87) ultimately fitting the Daily Mail's ideology. The media, therefore, seems to use these stories in this way to reinforce the values that the individual, society, or organisation holds, or is perceived to hold. It attempts to shape public opinion on these ‘moral panics’ in order to fit the consensus of what should be expected of individuals in relation to the values held within the media source.
This purpose of this paragraph will be to explain how the ‘moral panics’ reported in the media can shape social policy making. When a story is picked up upon by the media, and hyped to the extent that the public become fearful of similar incidences happening more frequently, often the media can launch a campaign to make the politicians or policy makers take action to prevent more cases of the offending phenomenon reoccurring. Although this is not always the case, as sometimes the media may simply report on the incidences and create the ‘moral panic’, which may instead spawn a dedicated organisation that would protest or put pressure on the policy makers to take action from the audience. The ‘Audience’, at which the reports of the phenomenon are aimed at in the ‘moral panic’, often respond to these cases in an equally disproportionate way in relation to the way that reports of these cases are significantly elevated in severity or frequency. In the case of the child abuse in Middlesbrough the most receptive audiences were “influential policy makers, ministers and civil servants within the DHSS” (Critcher: 93) this ‘moral panic’ over child abuse led to this ‘audience’ pressuring for change and culminating in the Children’s Act of 1989 (Hill 1990 cited in Critcher 2003 pp. 93). This was not the only ‘audience’ that was receptive to the ‘moral panic’ surrounding these child abuse allegations, the Social work profession began to actively seek out abuse in children, as the Critcher article explains, “The profession as a whole seemed highly susceptible to new definitions of dangers to children and remarkably unwilling to question the evidence on which they were based” (Critcher: 94). This suggests that the ‘moral panic’ had been sensationalised to such an extent that the ‘audiences’ at which the media was aiming were so fearful of the breakdown in morality in regards to these issues that they needed little or no evidence of the behaviour to believe that it was commonplace in society amongst these ‘folk devils’. In the study of the Mods and Rockers by Cohen the most receptive audience to the perceived threat in this ‘moral panic’ was the police. This can be seen by the way that local police forces paid for extra man hours from neighbouring forces and paid overtime to the police force in that area, Cohen states that “The simplest response of the police to their definition of the situation and the pressures placed on them, was to implement the ‘show of force’ principle and to increase the sheer number of officers on duty.” (Cohen: 92). This is evidenced by the fact that in Whitsun 1964, the amount the police paid in overtime was £2000, around four times the cost of damage due to vandalism from the original incident. The following bank holiday weekend Brighton police brought in the Metropolitan police as reinforcements at the cost of £3000 (Cohen: 92).
The media, in conclusion, use ‘moral panics’ to shape attitudes to events, by reinforcing or creating stereotypes of the groups or individuals in a society that are perceived to be of a big enough threat to the norms and values upheld within that society. The media do this by taking a phenomena that has occurred once or twice that it considers to be ‘newsworthy’ enough based on individual bias of the society, the organisation, or individual that deemed it to be ‘newsworthy’, and sensationalising the facts and events that surrounded the incident or incidents. In doing so they create a ‘folk devil’, whom the large proportion of the audience of the media source reporting the events consider to be an outsider and become fearful of what that group stands for. The media's relationship with society also helps shape policy making, and the way in which those in power react to events, by building up a big enough fear of these ‘folk devils’ in the media to the extent where groups or organisations take disproportionate measures to counteract these perceived threats to society or to individuals.
Macionis, J, J and Plummer, K. (2012) Sociology: A Global Introduction, 5th Edition, Harlow: Pearson.
Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils And Moral Panics The Creation Of The Mods And Rockers, Suffolk: Granada.
Critcher, C. (2003) Suffer Little Children: Child Abuse In Families, In Moral Panics And The Media, Ed. Critcher, C. Buckingham, Open University Press, pp. 81-98.
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