overview

This page considers what some observers characterise as sporadic 'moral panics' (incidents of mass hysteria, often directed against minorities) and others argue are merely manifestations of media irresponsibility and aggrandisement by interest groups rather than a mass panic or irrational outbreak of concern about morals and public safety.

It covers -

• introduction
• studies

     introduction

UK sociologist Stanley Cohen comments that

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 and other right-thinking people.

Those panics are apparent in contemporary society and in the past, occasioning Macaulay's remark that there is "no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality".

They have centred on entities and activities as diverse as comics, online paedophiles (or offline paedophilic clergy and policemen), satanists in kindergartens, 1950s rock & roll, pachinko, 'mods & rockers', 1920s jazz, engineers and other 'wreckers' in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia, homosexuality, fin de siecle hooligans, 'white slavery', electronic games or the addictive internet.

They are typically manifested through -

• official inquiries (including reports by Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees in Australia, New Zealand and Canada)
• denunciations of the stigmatised activity and representatives by 'community guardians' such as senior police, clergy, pundits and journalists
• passage of new legislation and strengthening of existing legislation, sometimes implemented with inadequate regard for legal protections or notions of human rights
• exemplary investigations and prosecutions, which are often protracted and do not uncover evidence of substantial abuse or other ills but may destroy the careers, lives or health of targets such as schoolteachers
• diversion of public and private resources from action that provides a substantive response to real problems.

Margaret Talbot thus suggested that the key features of contemporary moral panic over sex offences (which among other things resulted in proliferation of Offender Registers) include: -

1. inflated statistics.
2. dismissal of countervailing evidence
3. dubious research
4. indiscriminate merging of crime categories
5. diversion of attention and resources from more prevalent forms of child abuse (eeg emotional and physical neglect, physical abuse, abandonment and poverty).

Kenneth Gagne's 2001 dissertation Moral Panics Over Youth Culture and Video Games noted that moral panics are usually expressed as expressions of outrage rather than unadulterated fear and framed in terms of a dominant morality threatened by the activities of a stereotyped group (children, migrants, schismatics).

One consequence is that consumption of stigmatised commodities (such as comics and electronic games) may be reified, with attention by the mass media and by authority figures demonstrating to consumers that what they are doing is noteworthy.

Leaders in the community address the group from a supposed moral high ground, "treating" the panic with solutions that more often than not reinforce the stereotype and fail to produce any real resolution. Eventually the stereotype fades of its own volition, to be replaced in a few years by another moral panic, perhaps when the original entertainment form and the response to it change, creating a panic that is a variation on the original.

A moral panic is a panic over what is seen as deviant. The subject of the panic is usually not a suddenly new phenomenon, but something which has been in existence for many years, and suddenly comes to society's and the media's attention.

     studies

Cohen's seminal work is Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (Oxford: Blackwell 1981), complemented by Erich Goode & Nachman Ben-Yehuda's Moral panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (Oxford: Blackwell 1994); by their 'Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction' in 20 Annual Review of Sociology (1994) 149-171; and 'Moral Panic' and moral language in the media' by Arnold Hunt in 48(4) British Journal of Sociology (1997) 629-648.

Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molestor in Modern America (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1998) and Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Great Britain (New York: De Gruyter 1992) by Philip Jenkins, also responsible for Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet (New York: New York Uni Press 2001) and Pedophiles & Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2001). The latter is passionate but for us unpersuasive.

For fear and the media see in particular Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago 2005) by Joanna Bourke; 'Moral panic versus the risk society: the implications of the changing sites of social anxiety' by Sheldon Ungar in 52(2) The British Journal of Sociology (2001) 271-291; Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety (Cullompton: Willan 2007) by Murray Lee, 'Moral panic as ideology: Drugs, violence, race and punishment in America' by Ted Chiricos in Race With Prejudice: Race & Justice in America (New York: Harrow & Heston 1995) edited by Michael Lynch & E. Britt Patterson; Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2004) by Corey Robin; 'Moral Panic Over Youth Violence: Wilding and the Manufacture of Menace in the Media' by Michael Welch, Price & Yankey in 34(1) Youth & Society (2002) 3-30; 'Media, Government And Moral Panic: The Politics of Paedophilia in Britain 2000-01' by Charles Critcher in 3(4) Journalism Studies (2002) 521-35 and his Moral Panics and the Media (Milton Keynes: Open Uni Press 2003).

A sobering view of anxieties about satanism is provided in Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (New York: BasicBooks 1995) by Debbie Nathan & Michael Snedeker and The Satanism Scare (New York: Aldine De Gruyter 1991) edited by James Richardson, Joel Best & David Bromley. Other items, such as The day care ritual abuse moral panic (Jefferson: McFarland 2004) by Mary De Young and 'Moral Panics and the Social Construction of Deviant Behavior: A Theory and Application to the Case of Ritual Child Abuse' by Jeffrey Victor in 41(3) Sociological Perspectives (1998) 541-565, are highlighted here.

Work on particular overseas incidents includes George Lefebre's classic The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (London: NLB 1973), persuasively critiqued by Richard Cobb; David Johnson's The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2004); 'White Slavery' As Metaphor: Anatomy of a Moral Panic' by Mary Irwin in V Ex Post Facto: The History Journal (1996) here; ''Help! The Poles are coming': Narrating a contemporary moral panic' by Roos Pijpers in 88(1) Geografiska Annaler, Series B (2006) 91-103; and Flag Burning: Moral Panic & the Criminalization of Protest (New York: Aldine de Gruyter 2000) by Michael Welch

For moral panics closer to home see Outrageous! Moral panics in Australia (Hobart: ACYS 2007) edited by Scott Poynting & George Morgan, Lynley Hood's sobering A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case (Dunedin: Longacre 2001), Jock Collins' 2005 'Ethnic Minorities and Crime in Australia: Moral Panic or Meaningful Policy Responses' (PDF), Keith Moore's 2004 'Bodgies, widgies and moral panic in Australia 1955-1959' (PDF) and Carla Wallace's 2006 Menace or Moral Panic: Methamphetamine and the New Zealand Press (PDF).

Works on implications include 'The impact of "moral panic" on professional behavior in cases of child sexual abuse: Review, commentary and legal perspective' by Harry Elias in 3(1) Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (1994) 137-139; Politics, Punishment, and Populism (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1998) by David Windlesham; 'The Impact of "Moral Panic" on Professional Behavior in Cases of Child Sexual Abuse: An International Perspective' by Susan Edwards & Jacquelin Lohman in 3(1) Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (1994) 103-126; and 'Spin Doctors and Moral Crusaders: The Moral Panic behind Child Safety Legislation' by Kristen Zgoba in 17(4) Criminal Justice Studies (2004) 385-404.

Works on legal frameworks include 'Pedophiles and cyber-predators as contaminating forces: The language of disgust, pollution, and boundary invasions in federal debates on sex offender legislation' by Mona Lynch in 27(3) Law and Social Inquiry-Journal of the American Bar Foundation (2002) 529-566; 'Megan's Law As A Result Of Moral Panic' by Hans Selvog in 1(1) The Justice Policy Journal (2001) 72-93; 'The Internet, cyberporn, and sexual exploitation of children: Media moral panics and urban myths for middle-class parents?' by Hugh & Lyndy Potter in 5(3) Sexuality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (2001) 31-48.




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