Moral panic- the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that threatens the social order.
Folk Devils- People who are feared as a threat to societal values and interests.
Characteristics of Moral Panics according to Goode and Ben-Yehuda
- Concern
- Hostility
- Consensus (wide spread concern)
- Disproportional (disproportionate to the actual threat)
- Volatility (tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wave in public interest)
- Reaction outweighs the actual threat.
Examples: hoodys, Contemporary video game industry, witch-hunts.
Demonisation
The press exaggerates the folk devils and thus keeps the panic going, but you need a collective identity in order to do this.
Sub-culture
Dick Hebdige studys ‘sub culture’ the meaning of style (1970) examines how young people construct their identity through fashion and musical influence e.g. Emo, goth, scene kid.
Looking at examples from the written press, the representation of youth culture varies across different types of newspapers, mainly national and regional. The national papers seem to contain predominantly negative stories such as bullying, stabbings and general lack of respect. The use of emotive language and plosive alliteration make the headlines sound harsher and more serious, in many ways creating folk devils and moral panic as one example of negative behavior is exaggerated to include the whole of the nations youth. On the other hand, regional press creates a much more positive representation of youth culture reporting on stories of success in school or hobbies, therefore improving not only the representation of youth but the representation of the area. Although national papers do seem to represent the positive stories about youth, they seem to represent the positives as an exception to rule.
