Theories Of Moral Panic

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Stanley Cohen and Jock Young are two of the most influential sociologists, and their work on crime and the media has done a lot to help identify and understand moral panics. Thanks to Cohen’s and Young 's work it now allows for news stories to be properly assess and to help determine what is and what isn 't a moral panic. Which is very important because being able to skip to through all the nonsense that the news companies produces and find the real important issues that should be discussed is crucial. Moral panic involves cultural conflict, presented with stereotypically terms, the moral panic involves scientific experts, police, the courts and other agencies of social control (Young, and Cohen 2008. p.4,13). A moral panic occurs when a moral …show more content…
p.6). With two key emerging theories that were created which are the called the two strands of theory that are subcultural and labelling theory. Subcultural theory talks about how acts that having been being committed of many years previously are suddenly being reported as if this is the first time culture is seeing this issue (Young, and Cohen, 2008. p. 7). Now of all of a sudden the act that has been going on for a while is now seen as very harmful to everyone and deviant because the new companies reported it that way. Some examples that are used frequently are when news stations report and use clickbait headlines, like crime is at an all time high in order to try to put labels on certain activities, people, and cultures. Labelling theory points out that specific individual or groups are seen as more deviant because of predetermined biological factors, like skin colour or gender (Young, and Cohen. p.7). Which is why when a news report comes out and it is untrue, but it is turned in to a moral panic, it can have very dire consequences. Results of labelling theory are not just seen as effecting people who, reading or listening to the report but also the people that are being labelled (Young, and Cohen. p.7). When a person keeping hear that people like themselves are supposed to act and are expected to act a certain …show more content…
The moral panic were starting to be about the fact the moral panic has gotten to be so popular that the real issue was often pushed to the side(Jewkes, 2015. p. 103). Another criticism was the narrative of crime is at an all time high or that is it a untrue story line being manufactured by the new companies (Jewkes, 2015. p104). If the crime rates are going up in another area of the world and there is lots of war and violence going on, and that is all the new companies are reporting, it creates a very violent picture of the world. Which creates a wrongful image to the audience of the world being a very violent place leading them to believe that were they live locally the crime and violence is a huge problem (Jewkes, 2015. p.104). Moral panics have helped contribute to the cultural wars in society, because of the influential power that the news companies have over its viewers. When the same narrative of stories are being published like how crimes committed by african and americans and hispanics in the United States are always major headlines in the news. Eventually some of the viewers will start to label and stereotype all african americans and hispanics as violent and dangerous people, which will lead to tensions in the

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