MORAL PANICS AND THE BRITISH MEDIA - A LOOK AT SOME CONTEMPORARY 'FOLK DEVILS'

The term moral panic has been widely adopted both by the mass media and in everyday usage to refer to the exaggerated social reaction caused by the activities of particular groups and/or individuals. Such activities are invariably seen (at the time at least) as major social concerns and the media led reaction magnifies and widens the ‘panic’ surrounding them. This review starts by considering Stan Cohen’s seminal work on and analysis of moral panics ‐ indeed it was his initial research in the early 1970s that popularized the term itself ‐ and looks at Jock Young’s almost contemporaneous study of drug users. More recent studies that have reflected on and attempted to refine Cohen’s work, including Young’s revisiting of the notion that moral panics ‘translate fantasy into reality’, are highlighted as is the relationship between ‘signal crimes’ (Innes 2003 and 2004) and moral panics. It then considers some historical and contemporary examples of moral panics surrounding some quite different activities (and perpetrators of them) ‐ in particular, garotting in midVictorian England, ‘hoodies’ and paedophilia. The review concludes that there are key elements to moral panics and that these panics are the result of real events and actual behaviour and cannot be dismissed as myths.