Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.^[1] Stanley Cohen, author of the seminal Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), says a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."^[2] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils." Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tension and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo.^[3] The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.^[4]

Origins and use of the term

While many believe the term was coined by Stanley Cohen to describe press reporting and the reaction of the establishment to the behaviour of mods and rockers, it was actually first used by his colleague Jock Young in reference to the reaction to drug takers in Notting Hill.^[1]

Many sociologists have pointed out the differences between definitions of a moral panic for American and British sociologists. Kenneth Thompson has said that American sociologists tend to emphasize psychological factors whereas the British portray moral panics as crises of capitalism.^[5]

In Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978), Stuart Hall and his colleagues studied the reaction to the importation of the previously American phenomenon of mugging into the UK. Employing Cohen's definition of moral panic, Hall et al. theorized that the "rising crime rate equation" performs an ideological function relating to social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g., over mugging) could thereby be ignited to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.^[6]

Characteristics

Moral Panics have several distinct features. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, moral panic consists of the following characteristics:

• Concern - There must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
• Hostility - Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us".
• Consensus - Though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs" are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganised.
• Disproportionality - The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
• Volatility - Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.^[1]

Examples of use of the term

There were many examples of moral panics throughout human history. Some people consider some examples below moral panics, but others consider them legitimate concerns. Readers should be aware of it, though.

Pogroms, purges and witch-hunts

Persecutions of individuals or groups have been cited as moral panics, such as anti-Semitic pogroms, Stalinist purges, the witch-hunts of Renaissance Europe, the McCarthyist public interrogations and blacklisting of Communists in the US during the 1950s.^[7] Various actions in Western countries following the September 11 attacks affecting Arabs, Muslims, or those mistaken for them have been referred to as "moral panics."^[8][9]

White slavery

In Victorian Britain, campaigning journalist William Thomas Stead, (editor of the Pall Mall Gazette) procured a 13 year-old girl for £5, an amount then equal to a labourer's monthly wage (see the Eliza Armstrong case). Panic over the "traffic in women" rose to a peak in England in the 1880s. At the time, white slavery was a natural target for defenders of public morality and crusading journalists. The ensuing outcry led to the passage of antislavery legislation in Parliament.

However, it has been reported that the most extreme claims "were almost certainly exaggerated". Investigations of alleged abductions in Victorian England often found that the purported "victims" had participated voluntarily. Still, the "climate of prudery" prevalent in the late Victorian era made for easy scandalization of almost anything sexual, and various prohibitions were enacted. Parliament passed the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen in that year.^[10]

A subsequent scare occurred in the United States in the early twentieth century, peaking in 1910, when Chicago's U.S. attorney announced (without giving details) that an international crime ring was abducting young girls in Europe, importing them, and forcing them to work in Chicago brothels. These claims, and the panic they inflamed, led to the passage of the United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.^[11]

Chinese immigrants in the U.S. were singled out as white slavers, although any such activity was restricted to the criminal segment of the Chinese community. As an example of this in American culture, the musical comedy Thoroughly Modern Millie features a Chinese-run prostitution ring, which is specifically referred to as "white slavery." The gangster movie Prime Cut has mid-West white slaves sold like cattle.

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse is regarded by the majority of scholars as a series of moral panics originating in the U.S and spreading to other English-speaking countries in the 1980s and 1990s.^{[7][12][13][14]}

Pedophilia

Writing in 2004, Jewkes stated that the reactions to pedophilia in the Western world have been cited as "the most significant moral panic of the last two decades."^[15]

War on drugs

Some critics have pointed to moral panic as an explanation for the War on Drugs. For example a Royal Society of Arts commission concluded that "the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, ... is driven more by 'moral panic' than by a practical desire to reduce harm."^[16]

Influence of dime novels, movies, radio dramas, comic books, TV and video games

This section requires expansion.

Support for video game regulation has been linked to moral panic.^[17][18]

Criticism

In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Cohen outlines some of the criticisms that have arisen in response to moral panic theory. One of these is of the term "panic" itself, as it has connotations of irrationality and a lack of control. Cohen maintains that "panic" is a suitable term when used as an extended metaphor. Another criticism is that of disproportionality. The problem with this argument is that there is no way to measure what a proportionate reaction should be to a specific action.^[19] Others have criticized Cohen's work stating that not all the folk devils expressed in his work are vulnerable or unfairly maligned. Jewkes has also raised issue with the term 'morality' and how it is accepted unproblematically in 'moral panics'.^[15]

The British television show 'Brass Eye', written by and starring Chris Morris, attempted to satirise moral panic, most notably in the episodes 'Drugs' and the special 'Paedogeddon'. In these episodes, celebrities and politicians were duped into appearing in fictional campaigns against particular social ills, thus demostrating the tendency for both such groups towards jumping onto the bandwagon of campaigns against social problems, principally to raise their own profiles.

See also

• Backmasking
• Deviancy amplification spiral
• Deviance
• Culture of fear
• Fear, uncertainty and doubt
• Folk devil
• For the children
• Herd mentality
• Mass hysteria
• Missing white woman syndrome
• Scapegoat
• Seduction of the Innocent
• Witch-hunt

References

Further reading

• Ben-Yehuda, Nachman; Goode, Erich (1994). Moral panics: the social construction of deviance. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18905-X. 

External links

• Section 3.4: "Interpreting the crime problem" from Free OpenLearn LearningSpace Unit DD100_1 Online Open Education Resource Creative Commons by-nc-sa Licensed (originally written for the Open University Course, DD100, 2000)