A moral panic is when “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.”-Stanley Cohen.
A moral panic contains five 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.
· Disproportionality – The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed 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.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic)
The media often uses a moral panic in order to raise attention to an issue or sometimes even just to sell papers or raise ratings and can be used to force societal change, for better and for worse.
This is an example of moral panic being used for good; although the poster is extreme it is necessary to convey the message of how dangerous knife crime is.
However sometimes moral panics are misinformed and news outlets feed misinformation in order to get something banned and/or (as mentioned before) gain attention for itself.
This game was an example of the public being misinformed through news outlets who trying to start a moral panic over the content of the game.
Moral panics can even become witch hunts if the subject is extreme enough. Many celebrity’s and politicians have been known to jump on the bandwagon so to speak only to raise their own profiles, the political spoof show Brass Eye was known for criticising these people, one of the most well-known episodes being the special on pedophilia entitled “Paedogeddon”
This episode received many complaints, although almost all were reinforcing the idea that the media creates such an overblown moral panic over the subject, especially since Beverly Hughes, who called the show “unspeakably sick” had admitted to never even watching the show.
The following picture is an example of an attempted moral panic by the Daily Star who had found a joke photoshopped image online and printed the story as real. They were then sued by Rockstar games for slander: http://www.techdigest.tv/2010/07/daily_star_unco.html
Use of moral panic for music magazine
As the target audience are teenagers I could create a moral panic in order to make it seem more edgy and interesting.
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