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How do you feel about

Knife Crime?Alarm is growing that Britain

faces an unprecedented wave

of knife crime among teenagers

following the murder of 15London youngsters so far this

year. The worry for police and

parents is that a vicious cycle is

beginning: the more headlines

there are about knife crime, the

more youngsters start to carry

blades for their own safety.

- The Independent (2008)

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Yr 12 OCR Media Studies

Audience: Moral Panics

Learning Objectives:

1. To explore how the media acts as an agent

of moral panics

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Moral Panic Defined

According to Key Concepts in Communication(O'Sullivan, Fiske et al 1983)

"Moral panics then, are those processes wherebymembers of a society and culture become 'morallysensitized' to the challenges and menaces posed to'their' accepted values and ways of life, by theactivities of groups defined as deviant. The processunderscores the importance of the mass media inproviding, maintaining and 'policing' the availableframeworks and definitions of deviance, whichstructure both public awareness of, and attitudestowards, social problems."

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Moral Panics and the Media

Moral panics have several distinct features:

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.

Disproportional - The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threatposed 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.

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Moral Panics and Audiences

TASK: Read a newspaper article and write a

PEE paragraph to answer the following

questions:

What is denoted in the article that connotes a

moral panic?

How are the audience targeted by the article?

Why do you think the journalist/editor created a

sense of them and us in the article?

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The media is responsible for causing fear and

panic in society

OR

The media informs its audiences and helps

establish consensus in society.

Which of the statements above do you agree

with, why?