amplification of deviance
A version of labelling theory explaining moral panics in terms of a negative feedback loop that spirals out of control when the strength of social condemnation of a criminal act leads to more ...
crime-rate
A measure of change in recorded crime, over a given period of time, based upon official statistics for offences or offender rates. It enables comparison of variations across offences or areas, and ...
demonization
A sustained attack on an individual, a minority group, a political party, or a government in the popular press. See also folk devils; moral panic.
deviance
Behaviours, attitudes, and demeanours that differ significantly from the norms, standards, ethics, and expectations of society and are often classed as criminal or anti‐social.
effects tradition
A paradigm in academic media research which focused on what was initially assumed to be the potentially major influence of the mass media on their audiences (see also hypodermic model). Heavily ...
folk devils
A concept widely used in the study of deviance, folk devils are social types that unite the negative qualities of which a society or group disapproves. They are used as ...
football hooliganism
The Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985 contains finable offences of possessing alcohol, being drunk, or causing or permitting the carriage of alcohol on trains and vehicles capable of ...
hooligan
A word that came in the late 19th century to refer to members of unruly male youth groups. It had too a judgemental dimension, in that such groups were perceived as a threat to the established social ...
labelling theory
The hypothesis, which originated in sociology in the 1950s, that the social attribution of deviant identities to individuals or groups is a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to the amplification of ...
moral crusade
A campaign centred around a social movement or organization and concerned with a symbolic or moral issue such as alcohol or pornography. Classic sociological accounts of moral crusades include Joseph ...
moral enterprise
Within labelling theory, there is an interest in how rules are produced and enforced, an issue which Howard Becker (in Outsiders) calls moral enterprise. Moral enterprise thus refers to the processes ...
primary and secondary definers
Primary definers are credible individuals and institutions granted media access to enable their initial framing of events which are assumed to be within their area of competence: for instance, ...
riot
The definition of a riot varies across different cultures and different periods. When the revolutionary Russian audience stormed the stage to acclaim the sentiments of Stanislavsky's Dr Stockmann in ...
sociology of ageing
The physiological process of growing older has vital social and cultural dimensions which affect what is often seen as a purely biological inevitability. Age is also a cultural category and its ...
video nasties
*VHS video releases of horror films that caused a moral panic in the UK and led to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act in 1984. See also censorship; violence debate.
