The Myth of Moral Panics

Sex, Snuff, and Satan

Bill Thompson, Andy Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415812665
• eBook ISBN: 9781135083595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This study provides a comprehensive critique - forensic, historical, and theoretical- of the moral panic paradigm, using empirically grounded ethnographic research to argue that the panic paradigm suffers from fundamental flaws that make it a myth rather than a viable academic perspective.

Part I

The Making of a Myth

The following three chapters review the two seminal studies behind the moral panic myth. Chapter 1 outlines the transactional process in Cohen’s original model that has been lost to sociology along with the psychological assumptions, which explained and justified the label ‘moral panic.’ It demonstrates the inability of descriptive and generic panics to justify the label moral panic, and facilitates our critique of Cohen’s case study.

Chapter 2 reviews the evidence offered by Cohen for each phase, element, and feature of the moral panic. It reveals that while Folk Devils was a “relentlessly theoretical work” it was not “empirically grounded” as Garland claimed it was [2008: 9]. On the contrary, Cohen’s approach to evidence not only replicated the media methods that he condemned, his deliberate manipulation of the data should have led to a bigger academic scandal than that surrounding Margret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa.

Chapter 3 demonstrates that while Policing the Crisis is not a conspiracy theory, it is the paradigm’s equivalent of a black hole. In the same way that the astrological phenomenon was uncovered by analyzing the behavior of the galaxy around it; no one saw the mugging moral panic until its existence was revealed by the analysis proffered by the CCCS of the crisis in the heavens of hegemony surrounding the horror-headlines. However, as it followed Cohen’s model and merely made the politics of panics more overt it cannot be held responsible for the paradigm’s political bias.

1

Constructing Moral Panic

Introduction

In order to delineate the transactional process which distinguished moral panic from other reactions to horror-headlines, we have used bold script for the nine necessary elements and bold italics for the ‘must have’ features in the three-phase panic process. To save space and avoid repetition, we cover most of the specific evidence Cohen offered for these elements and features in the next chapter; although it will become apparent long before then that neither the descriptive panics or the ‘new, improved’ generic panics contain the essence of moral panic as Cohen defined them.

Phase One: The Inventory

The first phase of moral panic concerns the creation of a media inventory covering the precipitating event with its panic inducing images [1973: 30]. The first element, exaggeration and distortion includes the use of generic plurals presenting single events as common occurrences, publishing ‘facts’ known to be false or rumors, and over-reporting by using melodramatic language. In the case of mods and rockers:

The regular uses of phases such as ‘riot’, ‘orgy of destruction’, ‘battle’, ‘attack’, siege’, ‘beat up the town’ and ‘screaming mob’ left an image of a besieged town from which innocent holiday makers were fleeing to escape of marauding mob [1973: 31].

The meaning of the initial horror-headlines and reports were reinforced by the editorials and feature articles that appeared in the news-cycle sequence common to major stories, which pass comment on the misleading accounts rather than the real nature of events [1973: 30]. The subsequent societal-wide reaction is shaped by the erroneous putative definitions that emerge during this reinforcement. In Clacton’s case, they consisted of:

• “Gangs”—when most groups present were unstructured;

• Giving the mods and rockers distinct identities—before they had polarized into two groups;

• Inferring a deliberate “invasion from London”—when going to Clacton was a Bank Holiday tradition and many arrestees were local;

• Emphasizing the role of the motor bike and scooter riders—though they were in a minority;

• Claiming that the youths were “affluent”—though most were not;

• Inferring that they were “classless”—when most were working-class;

• Imputing “deliberate intent”—despite a lack of evidence; and

• Emphasizing the “violence and vandalism”, “cost of damage” and a “loss of trade”—when there was little serious violence, the vandalism was no greater than usual, the damage was not as excessive as reported, and the poor trading figures were the result of bad weather [1973: 34–37].

The vital role accorded to the feature articles demonstrates that horror-headlines alone are not enough for moral panic. As both are also common to crime reporting, a moral panic requires the other elements, beginning with the predictions that shape the next two phases. In Cohen’s case, the predictions consisted of the “implicit assumption, present in virtually every report that what had happened was inevitably going to happen again” [Cohen, 1973: 38]. Without that the social disaster, the self-fulfilling prophecy of deviancy amplification creating the problem being denounced, would not occur [1973: 38–39]. Likewise, the third element, symbolization, contains far more than the erroneous stereotypes found in subsequent case studies. That is because the disproportionality that appeared had nothing to do with the claims made as the US boosters contend, but the way that the symbolization process created the impression that the problem was rapidly getting worse. That impression also explains what later case studies do not: why the wider public was sucked into the panic; and why the claims and prediction did not appear to be disproportionate.

The first feature of the symbolization process involved the metamorphosis of positive and neutral concepts into negative symbols, making the problem appear bigger than it was. For example, the image of the quiet resort town of Clacton was now turned into ‘a disaster area’ indicated by the expression “we don’t want another Clacton here”. Second, Cohen drew attention to the three-step process whereby other youths became guilty by association. As ‘mod’ became symbolic of delinquent status, anything associated with mod like their hairstyle came to symbolize mod, and so anyone with a similar hairstyle was believed to be both a mod and a delinquent; making the problem look bigger still. Third, follow-up stories turning unrelated incidents into part of the problem encouraged people to believe that the predictions were coming true. By failing to cover these aspects, descriptive and generic panics cannot account for the effects of the symbolization. Rather than merely demonize the folk devil as later studies purport; by creating the appearance of an outbreak of the deviancy and offering the public an explanation for the precipitating event Cohen’s symbolization ensured that the effect of the inventory was total, not least because no one offered an alternative interpretation [1973: 43–44].

As well as demonstrating that horror-headlines and demonizing folk devils by stereotype are not enough to create a moral panic, these elements involve far more than the “concern” or “hostility” found in generic panics. Cohen’s first three elements have extensive social effects, fuelling the moral panic by creating the disproportionality which descriptive and generic panics imply is a function of existing anxiety rather than emerging from the interactive process. As we shall see, the existing anxiety about another suppressed problem is made visible by its projection onto the folk devil through the moral panic process, which also enhances it.

Reaction: Phase One

The second phase of Cohen’s model involved the inculcation of the media inventory amongst the public creating the societal-wide agreement about the symbolic meaning of the threat, especially when the deviancy is seen as a symptom of a “dislocation in the social structure” or a “threat to cherished values”. That is why this phase ensured that the reaction concerned the implications of the event for society rather than merely condemned the folk devils, and enabled Cohen to assert that moral panics restored the societal values under threat [1973: 49]. The forth element, the media orientation, spells out the implications of the deviancy for “society as we know it” and thereby determines “what is to be done” as a consequence [1973: 49]. It does this by reporting the subsequent public reactions to the inventory, from public meetings to government debates, reinforcing the psychological impact of the precipitating event, and linking the deviants to the structural strain creating the group myth that now emerges about the causes and consequences of the precipitating event [1973: 49–50]. In Cohen’s case, this was achieved by the increasing number of disaster analogies and prophecies of doom that appeared in the press, which were warning the public that unless “something was done” the situation would get worse. Although commentators offered several variants the public could consider, their collective effect was to increase the symbolic meaning of Clacton. It mattered not whether people argued that it was “not so much what happened” at Clacton but that it “could have been worse, and was likely to become so”; or, as “various social groups” insisted, that “it’s not only this” but other adverse social trends from teen pregnancy to illicit drug consumption that constituted the problem. As every comment alluded to the same structural strain, every reaction increased the size of the apparent threat [1973: 51–53].

As well as ignoring the psychology of moral panic that generated the reactions; it is rare to find any other case study illustrating the reports of the reactions in the press or the fifth element: the folk devils’ new image. This emerged from the spurious attributions and specific auxiliary status traits repeated in the press that linked the folk devils to the specific values perceived to be under threat. Indeed, unless one explores these claims emanating from the moral barricades, you can not explain why the folk devils became demonized. Later studies referring to existing stereotypes can not be panics. In Cohen’s case, the new labels “mods and rockers” replaced the emotive symbolic labels from the past like “hooligans” or “wild ones” used in the initial horror-headlines. In Cohen’s case these traits were summarized by a local prosecutor as: a lack of views on serious subjects, inflated ideas about their own importance, immaturity, irresponsibility, arrogance, and a lack of respect for law and peoples’ property. They were also encapsulated in a single phrase by the magistrate Dr. Simpson who denounced the youths as “sawdust Caesars”.

This re-labelling process with its new specific stereotypes could be seen in both the guilt by association mentioned earlier and the legends and myths about the youths that subsequently emerged. The most widely reported legend concerned the youth who offered to pay his £75 fine by bank check. Repeatedly told to prove that, as “fines won’t hurt them” harsher punishments were needed, the legend reinforced the media orientation that the problem was caused by the teens’ affl uence. In reality, it was a sarcastic comment, given that £75 would take months to pay off [1973: 55–57]. Once again, while there were disagreements on the moral barricades, with some arguing that delinquency was endemic and others suggesting it was only a lunatic fringe [1973: 59–61]; these contradictions did not confuse the public because every claim generated and diffused normative concerns and drew a sharp distinction between the new stereotype of the youths and normal behaviour [1973: 61].

The ability of moral panic to accommodate variations and even contradictions applied to the causation element too. A precise diagnosis was less important than the fact that everyone agreed that the deviancy was a “sign of the times”, part of the wider “social malaise” caused by being soft on crime, a decline in religious belief, and the delinquents’ lack of a sense of purpose having been “coddled” by the welfare state. In their turn, these explanations reflected a common reactionary or conservative belief that the permissive reforms of Victorian values had gone too far [1973: 61–62]. As a result, it mattered not that liberals believed that the youths’ boredom and alienation followed from a lack of creative outlets, or that conservatives argued that the youths were not using the outlets on offer; everyone agreed that the youths were alienated and bored [1973: 63–65]. While descriptive and generic panics give the impression that the impact of horror-headlines is immediate, Cohen did not. The media inventory did not spread across society in “an absorbed symmetry” and the public continued to disagree over the specific images and stereotypes, the class composition, the precise causes, and the potential longevity of the problem. For example, the informed public of magistrates, teachers, social workers, and probation officers:

were overwhelmingly critical, if not hostile, towards the mass media: 40.5 per cent felt that the media had exaggerated and blown the whole thing up, and a further 41.3 percent actually attributed responsibility to media publicity for part of what happened [1973: 69].

This deferential reaction did not undermine the panic, because these groups were unrepresentative of the wider public whose beliefs and reaction were covered in the third phase of the panic [1973: 74]. Later case studies rarely cover two other features from this phase. Despite offering a social strain to ‘explain’ the panic, with the exception of the odd US drug panic they rarely demonstrate how the folk devils come to personify the social strain because of the new stereotypes generated [Best, 1999]. Likewise, one rarely finds any discussion of the moral panic’s unique features that reflect the specific nature of the perceived threat in each panic. In Cohen’s case this consisted of the divide and rule tactic whereby:

the adult community, faced with an apparent attack upon its most sacred institution (property) and the most sacred guardians of this institution (the police) reacts, if not consciously, by over emphasising the differences among the enemy [1973: 58].

Although Cohen did not say so, these unique features are as important as the nine elements given they not only explain and demonstrate why each panic takes hold, but also help inhibit alternative explanations which would undermine their total effect. In the case of the mods and rockers, the divide and rule feature inhibited a class analysis, deflected blame away from society, and negated the possibility that the reaction reflected a fear of physical violence as the polarized youths only attacked one another. In other words, one is entitled to expect case studies to identify the unique features of a panic that reinforce the nine elements.

Reaction: Phase Two

The last phase, the rescue and remedy phase in Cohen’s natural disaster analogy [1973: 85] is vital because it is during periods of crisis like moral panic that the common values regarding what is “damaging, threatening or deviant” in societies are revealed, and explain both the success of the appeals for social unity and the panics’ ability to transcend any contradictions concerning causation [1973: 75–76].

The focused fear generated by the two previous phases is both a cause and effect of the sensitization process that creates the amplification of the deviancy which resolves “the anxiety inducing ambiguity” of the precipitating event by “structuring the situation” and making it “more predictable” despite being akin to mass hysteria [1973: 77]. In Cohen’s case, any act that looked like hooliganism was immediately reclassified as part of the mods and rockers phenomenon, making it look larger than it was by generating a large number of false alarms, the cancellation of legitimate activities because they “might lead to trouble”, and the reporting of non events keeping the issue to the fore [1973: 78]. This hysteria was matched by the diffusion, escalation, and innovation in police activities, expanding from the local to the national level, as their pre-Bank holiday preparations for invasions by the youths become increasingly complex and sophisticated. As this surpassed the normal response to deviancy and trampled on civil liberties it not only offered a standard to differentiate panics from the normal reaction to deviancy, it provided proof that a panic was in progress [1973: 86–87]. The failure of descriptive and generic panics to address these issues, from the initial confusion through to its ironic resolution by the escalation in social control culture enables us to argue that they amount to label slapping. They turn a normal level reaction to deviancy into a moral panic and do not contain the appearance and resolution of the psychological response that justified the label.

As well as mobilizing civil defense and other local government resources [1973: 92–93], Cohen argued that the police reaction led to the dramatization of evil whereby:

Deviants must not only be labeled but must also be seen to be labeled; they must be involved in some sort of ceremony of public degradation. The public and visible nature of this event is essential if the deviant’s transition to folk devil status is to be successfully managed [1973: 95].

As the police escorted the youths out of town, and the public demanded more controls [1973: 88–91 and 96]; this dramatization reached its peak in the Brighton...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface: The Dark Side
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Moral Panic for Dummies
• Part I: The Making of a Myth
• Part II: Progressive Panic
• Part III: The New Politics of Panic
• Conclusion: Carry on Panicking
• Notes
• References
• Index