Joy E.

Keke U1376280 Media sociology and media culture December 2016

The media’s role in constructing moral panics

Moral panics is a much-debated concept in sociology that was brought to life during the
1960’s change in cultural values and birth of new subcultures in Great Britain. This concept
was first introduced by South African sociologist, Stanley Cohen in his study of juvenile
movements in Britain. It is perceived by sociologists as the ‘over reporting’ or ‘exaggeration
of events by the media to raise unnecessary concern. Moral panics are occasional occurrences
in society seen to be engineered by the mass media. A widely accepted definition of moral
panics is by Stanley Cohen, he defines it as when “a condition, episode, person or group of
persons emerges to be defined as a threat to societal values and interests”. He states that they
emerge as moral panics because of their representation in the media; in a “stylized and
stereotypical fashion” (Cohen, 1972; 9). According to Goode and Ben Yehuda, there are
three theories of moral panics; the elite –engineered model, the grassroots model, and the
interest- group theory. The grassroots model argues that moral panics originate from the
public, the elite-engineered theory argues that the elite in the society create, strengthen,
engineer’s moral panics, while the interest-group theory argues that social experts like the
media, police etc. create moral panics (2009). The purpose of this essay is to identify the
media’s role in the construction of moral panics. This essay will use a historical moral panic
to explain how the media contributes to the construction of a moral panic. Like many others,
this essay argues that moral panics are borne out of exaggeration and over reporting by the
media in order to trigger extreme social reactions. This essay is divided into two parts, it will
begin by identifying the media’s role in constructing moral panics, then with the help of
Stanley Cohen’s three elements of media inventory, it will use the murder of James Bulger to
show how the media contributed to the construction of the moral panic against video nasties.

The media is an enormous contributor in constructing a moral panic, looking at Cohen’s

disaster response model which he applied to moral panics, the role of the media in
constructing a moral panic is inventory. He said in his book folk devils and moral panics
“immediately after a disaster there is a period of unorganized response. This is followed by
the inventory phase during which those exposed to the disaster take stock of what has
happened and of their own condition”. (Cohen, 1972;30). He goes on to say that the way the
incident is interpreted at that time will be based on ‘rumours’ and ambiguous perceptions,
this is to say that until the media reports it and or provides an analysis, it is not a solid fact.

To understand the media’s inventory period, one has to first understand the process of news
making. The media is able to convey messages to large populations, using Television,
newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. This enables it to report stories directly to the public that
can awaken fear and concern in their hearts. Cohen agrees that “their very reporting of certain
‘facts’ can be sufficient to generate concern, anxiety, indignation or panic” (1972:16). This is
because the media dictates what story has news values and is worthy to be news. Therefore,
they are able to play up the elements of a story to enhance its news worthiness (Hall et al,
2013; 57). The media singles out threats by amplifying and exaggerating the situation.
Exaggeration is one of the core ingredients for a moral panic. Cohen refers to this as the
element of exaggeration and distortion in his book, folk devils and moral panics, in order to
draw the attention of the public to the situation, the media positions the situation in a way that
it is perceived as a threat. They do so by “exaggerating grossly the seriousness of the events,
in terms of criteria such as number taking part, the number involved in violence and the
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The media’s role in constructing moral panics

amount and effects of any damages or violence” (Cohen, 1972). When reporting a situation,
Cohen says they use the sensational headlines, the melodramatic vocabulary and the
deliberate heightening of those elements in the story considered as news. (Cohen, 1972;33).
They tell stories that are highly exaggerated and make assertions that are supposed to
generate fear and get their audience to react in a desired way. This is why Cohen states in his
book that, the way the media presents and interprets a situation is the form most people
receive their picture of the deviance and disaster (Cohen, 1972; 30).

The media then predicts a reoccurrence of the incidence, Cohen refers to this as the element
of prediction in the inventory period. “This is implicit assumption, present in every report,
that what has happened was inevitably going to happen again” (Cohen, 2002; 35). In order to
derive a desired response from the general public and social experts, the media positions the
event as one that is likely to reoccur. The media, print media mostly, released reported
statement from social experts and people “affected” by the events, in which they provide
different solutions to the problem. They interview these people and report extracts of these
interviews to heighten the tension and indirectly increase expectations of dramatic events
which then attracts ‘spectators’ eager to witness drama unfold (Thompson,1998;34). Cohen
argues that this element is disastrous during a moral panic because it “played the role of
classical self-fulfilling prophecy” (Cohen, 2002; 34). However in some cases, these
predictions did not fulfil themselves, Cohen says “where predictions were not fulfilled, a
story could still be found by reporting non-events” (Ibid). For instance, journalists report
stories about the absence of these folk devils in society, which in reality is not news but it is
being reported to justify the creation of it as news. A prime example is the murder of James
Bulger which I will analyse later.

The media later directs the public’s attention towards what Cohen calls ‘folk devil(s)’, he
describes them as a visual representation of what we should not be .Goode and Ben-Yehuda
defines a folk devil as “the agent responsible for threatening or damaging behaviour or
condition.”(2009). Cohen refers to this period as symbolization, this is when the media
defines a group or people and create a consensus about them. In this stage “neutral words
such as place-names can be made to symbolize complex ideas or emotions” (Cohen, 1972;
40).Cultures, people and terms lose their original meanings and become what the media
makes of them. These terms, style or group of persons no longer represent their true identity,
the media successfully detaches it from its original neutral context and attaches it to a
negative context. Turner and surface refer to this process as” the creation of unambiguously
favourable symbols” (Turner and Surace, 1956; 16-20). By doing so, even when these folk
devils eventually disappear, they are awakened when similar cases arise in present times.

The James Bulger Murder and Video Nasties

Exaggeration and Distortion

The main distortion in this case is that the child’s play 3 movie influenced the actions of
James Bulger’s murderers. The initial panic was about, “everything that had gone wrong in
Britain”, the absence of parents in the lives of their children, high level of individualism in
society, etc. After the trial in November 1993, when the judge made a throwaway comment
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The media’s role in constructing moral panics

–“I suspect that exposure to violent video films may in part be an explanation”, the panic
shifted from being a deficiency in society and became a media panic (Cohen, 2002; 9). The
judge’s remark gave rise to a factoid that the last video rented by one of the boy’s father was
child’s play 3, a horror movie. Newspaper tabloids especially, led the public into believing
that the incident was a copycat of the child’s play 3 movie, thereby creating the consensus
that video violence can negatively influence children.

The reporting of the judge’s statement caused extreme social reactions, people were very
concerned about the safety on their children at home. In terms of exaggeration, the media,
newspapers especially, incorporated analysis from socially accredited experts who were
capable of creating new moral barricade in society. After the trail in 1993, the public was
already calling for action form the authorities, David Alton, MP proposed the tightening of
the video recording act of 1984(Cumberbatch,1994;2). He proposed his new clause 42
addition to the criminal justice and public order bill. Although he had the support of one
quarter of the MP’s in the house, Home Secretary Michael Howard was unconvinced (ibid).
David Alton then published a report written by Professor Elizabeth newton of Nottingham
university and “Violent videos, violent children” with the help of the media. The media used,
as Cohen describes it, sensationalistic headlines to convey this message to the public.
“‘Naïve’ experts admit threat of violence videos” (lead story in the daily mail, April 1994),
“VIDIOTS! At last experts admit movies nasties DO kill” (the daily mirror, April 1994)
(ibid).

The element of exaggeration can also be found in the repetition of the story. Goode & Ben-
Yehuda (2009;34) wrote, “obviously specific “stations” grip certain sectors of the society
more than others; very few of them equally panic-inducing to the public at large”, this
tragedy had the perfect ingredient to create a moral panic that could affect the entire society ,
young children . Not just young children but young children killing themselves. The murder
of a child by another child was truly minute at that time but the story was slightly over
reported. For instance, the daily mail covered the story 62 times including supplements, and
editorial pages. The daily telegraph produced 23 articles and two editorials, while the
guardian dedicated 23 articles to the case (Pilcher & Wagg, 1996). However the case of
Stephen Lawrence, a young black male who was murdered by a group of young white males
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The media’s role in constructing moral panics

failed to cause similar stare (Cohen, 2002). This therefore justifies my argument earlier, that
the media dictates what story news is worthy.

Predictions

The predictions in the case of James bulger took the form of reported statements where
parents expressed concern, social experts proposed to solution to the ‘problem’. The media
reported these predictive stories in way that can be described as cries for help and calls for
action. After the Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were sentenced, the media began to
campaign for the government to put an end to video nasties or more children will keep killing
other children.

Like Cohen said “unlike the natural disasters where the absence of predictions can be
disastrous, with social phenomena such as deviance, it is the presence of predictions that can
be disastrous” (Cohen, 1972; 39). It was fairly easy for the media to generate public concern
with their predictions mostly because the folk devil was a non-human. It was easy to paint it
as a folk devil and cause it to disappear from society. “The sun staged a public burning:
report came that child’s play 3 had been removed from video shops; Scotland’s largest video
shop burnt its copies” (Cohen, 2002). As the media continued to predict so did fear continue
to grow in society, therefore the government had to create a new “moral barricade”. The
government took a second look at David Alton’s proposed legislation and enacted it. His
addition to the bill was meant to restrict any video that is perceived to offer “inappropriate
role models” to a child as well as any psychological damage (Cumberbatch, 1994). The
government tightened the movie testing procedure, the British board of film classification had
to properly examine videos that may cause any harm to potential viewers in which the video
dealt with criminal behaviour, illegal drugs, violent behaviour or incident, horrific behaviour
or incidents , human sexual activity”(BBFC,2014). This brought about severely controlled
viewing in British society, movies such as Mickey, Silent Night, Deadly night 2, Grotesque,
Women in cell block 9, to be rejected by the BBFC for the above stated.

Eventually, 16 years later, their predictions came to fulfilment. A pair of Edington brothers
abducted two young boys and tortured them severally. It was also rumoured by neighbours
that the kids had been exposed to movies containing extreme violence growing up. The media
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The media’s role in constructing moral panics

saw this as an avenue to celebrate their fulfilled predictions. They all used similar if not same
vocabulary ‘chilling echoes’ or ‘echoes’ to propagate the same view. For instance, “The case
of the young attackers has chilling echoes of the James Bulger sadists” (daily mail, 2009),
“The boys, aged 10 and 11, are alleged to have randomly targeted the victims, who were
burnt with cigarettes and slashed "from neck to toe" in a brutal attack that carried echoes of
the killing of toddler James Bulger 16 years ago.”(The telegraph,2009), “Child’s Play 3,
featuring a possessed killer doll called Chucky, was blamed for James Bulger’s murder after
a copy was found in the house of one of his young killers”(daily star,2009), “The attack has
echoes of the murder of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 by two boys aged 10 at the
time.”(The guardian, 2009). However, in truth there was no real proof that the kids had
watched the child’s play, just a relative and human proof is known to act on emotions most of
the time. Also, the relative said, the kids were allowed to watch through child’s play videos
since age six and seven. The brothers were 12 and 10, there was no proof that they had seen
the movie recently, however there was proof that they had seen it some five –six years ago.
This then renders the media’s prediction still unfulfilled.

Symbolization

The name ’James Bulger’ initially represented a two-year-old toddler who was murdered by
two 10 year-old boys. However, due to the manner in which the media reported the story, the
name eventually represented something else. The name symbolized ‘the murder of innocence
by the invincible hands of video nasties’, it symbolized very complex ideas and emotions.

Cohen says that there are three processes in which such a symbolization is carried out. For
instance, the term (video nasties) becomes a symbolic of a certain status (Evil); objects
(young children) symbolize the word; the objects themselves become symbolic of the status
(Cohen, 1972; 40). The end product of this process is that the media strips video nasties of its
previous context; a film released for home viewing that includes scenes of extreme violence,
and clothes it in a negative context. Such that whenever it is referred to, it sparks
“unambiguously unfavourable feelings”, Turner & Surace, 1956(Cited in, Cohen, 1972;
41).The media adopts some styles used in the exaggeration and distortion stage to create a
consensus about the term. They used misleading and inappropriate headlines and
melodramatic vocabulary to create unambiguously negative symbols of video nasties even
when the context in which they were reporting about did not warrant such ambiguousness.
For instance, the headline “The case of the young attackers has chilling echoes of the James
Bulger sadists” (Daily mail, 2009) was telling the public that the case of the two brothers who
kidnapped and tortured two children were identical to the James bulger case. When in truth
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The media’s role in constructing moral panics

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Cumberbatch, G. (1994). Legislating Mythologies: Video violence and Children. Journal of

Mental Health, , 1-15. Retrieved from
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Cumberbatch(1994)VideoViol.pdf.

British Board of Film Classification. (2014). The arrival of videos in the UK, including 'video
nasties', and the Video Recordings Act 1984. Retrieved from
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/education-resources/student-guide/legislation/video-recordings-act.
Joy E. Keke U1376280 Media sociology and media culture December 2016

The media’s role in constructing moral panics