Moral panic

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A moral panic is a mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group of people, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. It has also been more broadly defined as an "episode, condition, person or group of persons" that has in recent times been "defined as a threat to societal values and interests." * Cohen, Stanley. Folk devils and moral panics. London: Mac Gibbon and Kee, 1972. ISBN 0415267129 p. 9

These panics are generally fueled by media coverage of social issues, although semi-spontaneous moral panics do occur. Mass hysteria can be an element in these movements, but moral panic is different from mass hysteria in that a moral panic is specifically framed in terms of morality and is usually expressed as outrage rather than unadulterated fear. Moral panics (as defined by Cohen) revolve around a perceived threat to a value or norm held by a society normally stimulated by glorification within the mass media or 'folk legend' within societies. Panics have a number of outcomes, the most poignant being the certification to the players within the panic that what they are doing appears to warrant observation by mass media and therefore may push them further into the activities that lead to the original feeling of moral panic.

Origins

The term was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 to describe media coverage of Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. A factor in moral panic is the deviancy amplification spiral, the phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events.

While the term moral panic is relatively recent, many social scientists point to the Middletown studies, first conducted in 1925, as containing the first in-depth study of this phenomenon. In these studies, researchers found that community and religious leaders in an American town condemned then-new technology such as the radio and automobile for promoting immoral behavior. For example, a pastor interviewed in this study referred to the automobile as a "house of prostitution on wheels," and condemned this new invention for giving citizens a way of driving out of town when they should be attending church.

Examples

Commonly cited examples of moral panics inspired by real or imagined phenomena include:

• Backmasking - fears that songs had hidden demonic messages when played backwards (1970s and 1980s).
• Bestiality, in Washington USA, in the wake of the 2005 Kenneth Pinyan affair, and in Missouri in the wake of the Jerry Springer Show episode 'I married a horse'.Pinyan was the passive partner in an act of sexual penetration by a stallion videotaped by a friend. This was the only incident of its kind in the state's history, and it could be said the human, who died from internal injuries, was the victim of his own act. Police concluded there was no evidence of animal abuse and that the only crime was the relatively minor one of trespass. None the less, almost instantly, legislation was proposed in a form of moral panic, covering every aspect conceivable: the act, the videotaping of the act, the knowing granting of permission for the act, the observing of the act. [SB-6417 2006].
• Blood libel
• Child pornography, especially on the Internet, in the 1990s and 2000s.
• The Columbine High School massacre has led many schools into perceived overreaction against imagined deviance among their pupils; see "zero tolerance".
• Comic books as a source of deviancy in the 1950s.
• Communism - see McCarthyism in the 1950s.
• The Cult debate of the 1970s.
• Day care sex abuse in the 1980s.
• Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games
• Gel bracelet - The urban legend of boys breaking girls' bracelets for the purposes of causing the girl to "owe" the boy sexual favors according to a high school tradition.
• Happy slapping
• Homosexuality
• Hoodies, in the UK.
• LSD
• Marijuana
• Meth
• Miscegenation
• Mods and Rockers caused moral outrage in Britain in the 1960s.
• Mugging In England 1972 a moral panic erupted about the fear of muggings.
• Pedophilia, Child sexual abuse - fear of "molesters" makes for sensational news - an ongoing tabloid newspaper campaign in the UK resulted in the (incorrectly) reported [link] assault and persecution of a paediatrician by an angry mob (which had confused the two words) in August 2000 [link], and in 2005 a man in Manchester, England was lynched after being mistakenly accused of child molestation. [link]
• Rock 'n' Roll music - protest of violent or sexual lyrics from 1960s to 1980s.
• Role-Playing Games
• Same-sex marriage
• Satanic ritual abuse
• Social networking sites, such as MySpace - fear of predators stalking teens. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5182960
• Trenchcoat
• Violence in video games
• The War on Christmas
• White slavery
• Witchcraft

See also

• Crowd psychology
• Culture of fear
• Folk devil
• Mass hysteria
• Missing white woman syndrome
• Media hype
• Scapegoat
• Socionomics
• Witch hunts

References