There are many key elements of a ‘Moral Panic’ the biggest being media outlets write story’s about things that have happened and change key elements and exaggerate them to make the public talk about it more. The definition of a moral panic is ‘An instance of public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as threatening the moral standards of society’. (Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2018) The way media shows crime can cause a moral panic as they exaggerate story’s and cause the public fear. Social media is also a key element of a ‘Moral Panic’ most story’s written on social media are fake or very over exaggerated. Also most story’s on social media don’t come from established media outlets like, Sky News and The Sun they just come from random people writing a status on Facebook or twitter etc, so no one actually knows the truth but that person who wrote the post but people still share and believe it even if they don’t know the person. Headlines on the front of news papers can cause moral panic, for example if your stood in line at a store and you glance at a newspaper the headline it might have an over exaggerated headline but when you actually read the story it’s not as bad as the actual headline. But someone might read the headline and tell other people about it when they don’t know the full story.
In 1964 just before Easter around 1000 Londoners decided to go to a Seaside town and there was a few scuffles and stone throwing between some groups, on Easter Monday the press released story’s about what had happened but had exaggerated it to a great extent. The press had stated that the Mods and Rockers had huge drunken fights when that was far from the truth, this caused the public fear and they started to hate Mods and Rockers. These publications also created a different moral panic within the Mods and Rockers as they thought this is who there ‘enemy’ was now. Seaside towns were now split between Mods and Rockers. From this the police thought the rivalry between the Mods and the Rockers was out of hand so they clamped down on it and started to focus on stopping it, this only made the situation worse because the Mods and Rockers decided to fight more. (Savage, 2014)
Stanley Cohen researched why delinquent sub cultures seemed to form mainly in deprived areas in inner city’s. He argued that lower class youth wanted the values and lifestyle of mainstream society but didn’t have the means to achieve this so they created there own sub-cultures with there own values and lifestyle so they could feel like they fit in and feel normal. Cohen believed young people who cannot gain respectable status join gangs and subcultures. Cohen researched in to the Mods and Rockers because they weren’t mainstream society and they were a subculture. Cohen then introduced the term Moral Panic which is widely used within criminology to this day and still has relevance today. (Treadwell, 2013)
There is many varieties of Moral Panic today. Since the invention of social media like Facebook and Twitter moral panic has became huge, everyday there is a new story on social media about the affects of knife crime, drugs usage, gangs and pedophiles etc. Most of these story’s on social media don’t come from legitimate media outlets it’s usually someone seeing something happening and then they post about it on social media, this then gets shared through the community causing panic and fear to the public. One of the biggest Moral Panics at the moment is gangs and knife crime in city’s like London and Manchester. Everyday there is a new story about how the statistics for knife crime are rising and how knife crime is becoming a massive issue in inner city’s and with young groups. I believe that the knife crime statistics are rising in great amounts is because knife crime is becoming popular with young people as they see these story’s and see the amount of coverage they are getting so they might try it so they are on the news which might give them status within a gang or status within the community or sub-culture. Young people also see how people are getting away with knife crime so that makes them think its easy. Another moral panic is pedophiles, for example on facebook there is lots of post about mainly men following children in parks, town centres, and streets. Usually most of these posts are true but over exaggerated, I believe these posts make people panic because they are all over social media all the time and its scares people because they think they cant go anywhere without something like this happening when in reality its only a very small amount of people this is happening to. Social media is the cause of many major moral panics, for example there is many different story’s that circulate Facebook and other social media platform. One of the story’s that has been shared recently is that criminals have been going round housing estates and watching what houses have dogs and marking the bin or pavement outside of that house so they can come back and steal them, this story is untrue but it is worrying people as people start sharing it. It makes people panic for no reason and then they start telling people and worrying more. These story’s are prime examples of a moral panic. There is many story’s on social media and in the media about drug usage. The media over exaggerate story’s about drugs, if one article in the news labels drug users as junkies, crack heads, and smack heads and states the way they look and the way they dress it makes drug users feel bad and makes them think that’s the stereotype they have to go under. These stereotypes can cause moral panic through the public as if they see someone dressed or acting a way a drug user does they automatically assume that they are a drug user and might panic. These stereotypes could also make drug users not want to receive help as they believe that they will be labelled as these things. This is really bad because then they will just continue using and fall further in to this stereotype and this proves the media story to be correct.