Stanley Cohen's Concept of a Moral Panic - 1692 Words.
Cohen defined a moral panic as the following: Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians.
The concept of moral panic was created by Stan Cohen in his landmark study, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, published in the 1960s. Cohen can be broadly seen as an interactionist, and his research was mainly qualitative. Whilst his work had a considerable influence, in more recent years some of the theoretical weaknesses have become more apparent. This essay will discuss the strengths and.
Cohen defines moral panics as “a condition, episode, person, or group persons emerges to become defined as a threat in societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media” (Cohen, 1972.p.9). According to Cohen moral panics are part of a collective behaviour where there is panic over a particular behaviour seen as deviant that a.
The term moral panic was initially coined by Jock Young in Stanley Cohen’s Images of Deviance (1971). Cohen subsequently employed the concept in his study of two 1960s British youth movements, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972). He defined a moral panic as a group or condition that is a response to a threat to established values or interests. The central actors in moral panics include the.
According to Cohen, moral panic occurs when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (p. 9). Examples of such moral panics are on the one hand historically harmless ones, such as the “mods and rockers conflict” (Cohen coined the term in 1973 when he examined media coverage of the 1960s' riots in Brighton.
The moral panic thesis has been criticised for its inability to determine a link between the extent of disaster and the level of response to it. Failing to accurately determine public levels of concern and as to whether people are motivated by the media to the exclusion of all other influences, makes it impossible to gauge whether the problem is real or not (Jewkes, 2011).
As originally explained by Cohen, at least five sets of social actors are involved in a moral panic. These include: 1) folk devils, 2) rule or law enforcers, 3) the media, 4) politicians, and 5.