moral panic
moral panic Quick reference
A Dictionary of Sociology (4 ed.)
... panic The process of arousing social concern over an issue—usually the work of moral entrepreneurs ( see moral enterprise ) and the mass media. The concept was used most forcefully by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1971) , with reference to the concern over the teenage styles of Mods and Rockers in England in the mid-1960s, but it has since been applied in the analysis of the societal reaction to many other social problems, including football hooliganism, child abuse, AIDS, and numerous adolescent subcultural activities . Useful...
moral panic Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine (3 ed.)
... panic A social reaction to relatively minor acts of social deviance which have been exaggerated and amplified by the media. It is claimed that moral panic has resulted in an exacerbation of some deviances such as football hooliganism . See also deviance amplification , labelling theory...
moral panic Quick reference
A Dictionary of Law Enforcement (2 ed.)
... panic A mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behaviour or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society's values and interests. Moral panics are generally fuelled by media coverage of social issues. The phenomenon was first described in 1972 in relation to the ‘Mods & Rockers’ groups of the 1960s. Since then moral panics have occurred in relation to ‘ritual satanic abuse’, that was perceived to be widespread in the 1980s, and paedophilia, which led to vigilante action against innocent...
moral panic Quick reference
A Dictionary of Sports Studies
...cultivation of moral panics. Chas Critcher has examined ‘Moral Panics and Newspaper Coverage of Binge Drinking’ (in Bob Franklin, ed. Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism , 2008 ), demonstrating the continuing usefulness of Cohen's ideal type of, or classification of the characteristics of, the moral panic. Critcher concludes that binge drinking is a ‘fairly mild moral panic…It has a new name but lacks a folk devil’. This is a very interesting observation, and in high-performance sport at least, individuals flouting the moral expectations...
moral panic Quick reference
A Dictionary of Journalism
...moral panic A sociological term that has now become common parlance for an exaggerated sense of public and/or media fear over a particular social phenomenon, form of behaviour, or section of the population. A moral panic may be shortlived but while it lasts it may seem to sweep across many sections of society and dominate the headlines for a period until gradually fading away, sometimes to return later and sometimes to vanish forever. Examples in the UK are said to include widespread public concern at one time or another over juvenile delinquents, Teddy boys,...
moral panic Quick reference
A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care (2 ed.)
... panic Coined by Stan Cohen ( 1942–2013 ) in his Folk Devils and Moral Panics ( 2002 ; orig. 1972 ) to describe an exaggerated societal reaction, fuelled by the media, to what begin as minor acts of deviance . He studied ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’, gangs of youths with different youth culture identifications, and the fighting in which they engaged at seaside resorts. The over-reaction to the initial skirmishes led to a process of deviancy amplification that had the effect of attracting more participants. As well as seeing the societal response as an...
moral panic ((sociology)) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Media and Communication (3 ed.)
... panic (sociology) A social process beginning with the exaggerated representation in the mass media of isolated acts of deviant social behaviour (such as mugging, football hooliganism, vandalism, joy-riding, drug abuse, road rage, and child abuse) as a major social crisis of epidemic proportions. The media’s sustained coverage of such incidents as a coherent ‘story’ reflects the use of sensationalism in the interests of expanding readerships and audiences . The salience of the media coverage ( compare cultivation theory ) triggers an...
moral panic
Moral Panics Reference library
Chas Critcher
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime, Media, and Popular Culture
...concedes that a potential moral panic may be stalled or sidetracked. Goode and Ben-Yehuda make a consistent and careful distinction between plentiful moral crusades and much rarer moral panics. The full-blown moral panic follows a predictable path and demonstrates consistent characteristics, but there are many claims-making activities that never assume the status of moral panics. The allegation of political partisanship—that conservative groups, but not liberal or radical ones, are castigated for seeking to create moral panics—cannot apply to Goode and...
moral panics Quick reference
A Dictionary of Gangs
... panics A sociological construction that outlines the processes involved in the criminalization of a particular social concern or issue. Reasons for moral panics are often not authentic. Rather, they are employed to generate money and/or fear. They are also used to create a diversion away from another more important societal concern or issue. As they pertain to gangs, moral panics have been used towards these ends. They have also been generated in order to strengthen the public’s support of law enforcement-based strategies towards gangs and the budgets...
Moral Panics and Folk Devils Reference library
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
The Oxford Encyclopedia of International Criminology
...by, moral crusades and moral panics detonated by interest groups and organizations. Thus, the third source of moral panics is that they can be generated by interest groups, that is, moral entrepreneurs that launch moral crusades ( Becker, 1963 ) and ignite moral panics in order that some moral rules are enacted and enforced. Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s second main point is their suggested outline of the five elements that may characterize moral panics ( 2009 , pp. 37–43): • Concern . For a moral panic to take place a concern must exist regarding some moral...
Poverty Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...pauper was a specifically delineated moral and economic category. Building on earlier definitions of poverty as a condition both of labour and of destitution, social commentators cut away a newly identified ambiguity to describe as paupers all who relied on the poor rates or charity to supplement their income. Pauperism was seen as individual moral failure, and parish relief, particularly wage supplementation, was condemned for paralysing moral independence and dissolving social ties. Symptomatic of this economic and moral disorder, the pauper's house was...
Policing Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...in the rapidly growing provincial industrial or commercial towns by the early nineteenth century. A supposed increase in property crime and social disturbance gave rise, from the 1750s onwards, to a series of ‘moral panics’ about a growing and unstoppable crime wave and the perceived breakdown of the moral, social, and political order. These ‘moral panics’ were articulated and used by a number of influential figures to try to persuade the governing class of the need for a regular, organized police. The novelist Henry Fielding ( 1707–54 ) also made his mark as...
Domesticity Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...In James Phillips Kay's (later Kay-Shuttleworth) Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes in Manchester ( 1832 ), for example, moral and physical threats to ‘the sanctity of the domestic circle’ are both the cause and effect of the impoverished condition of the urban Irish poor in Manchester. In effect, Kay's medical, social, and statistical diagnosis racializes *poverty [12] and disease as the inherent natural condition of the urban Irish poor. This identification of the poor with moral laxity and sexual excess worked to justify the middle...
Democracy Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...was increasing agreement among the leading spokesmen for radical reform that the right to vote should be attached to the person and not to the property of man. To deny any man the franchise was to cast a slur on his moral character and to assert that he was less than a man. The possession or lack of wealth or property was no proof of moral worth or civic virtue. Radicals frequently condemned all hereditary honours, titles, and privileges, yet still only a tiny minority of them wanted to abolish the House of Lords and fewer still the *monarchy . Moreover,...
Revolution Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...and the popular press. Throughout this period, as in the earlier part of the decade (notably with the *Luddites and a spate of *agrarian rioting in 1816 ), there were insurrectionary tendencies within working-class and artisan communities, registered by frequent panics among the political élite that the people were arming. But, as in the 1790s, the major part of the organized political activity of this period relied on traditional methods of protest and took political reform as its sole objective. Social reform and a reduction in taxation were...
Exodus Reference library
Walter Houston and Walter Houston
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...at the divine appearance because it is for their good: ‘fear’ in v. 20 is not the panic terror that is now seizing them, but reverence and awe which should lead to the right conduct that God asks of them. Once again ( cf. 15:25 ) they are being ‘tested’ or ‘challenged’ to make the right response. ( 20:22–23:33 ) The ‘Book of the Covenant’ The very long speech that YHWH now delivers to Moses to pass on to the Israelites includes a much wider range of religious, moral, and legal instruction than the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments make absolute...
Proverbs Reference library
K. T. Aitken and K. T Aitken
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...by God himself ( v. 6 ). Solomon's prayer ( 1 Kings 3:7–9 ) came to typify the prayerful attitude required of the wisdom seeker ( cf. Wis 8:18, 21; 9:4 ). The present passage calls rather for concerted intellectual and moral application. vv. 7–8 characterize the wisdom God gives as ‘sound wisdom’, i.e. effective. It maintains God's moral order (‘paths of justice’) by preserving the upright from the pitfalls and snares of evil. The ‘shield’ may either be ‘God’ (NRSV) or ‘sound wisdom’ (NEB ‘as a shield’). The upright are God's ‘faithful ones’ ( ḥăsîdîm )....
1 & 2 Samuel Reference library
Gwilym H. Jones, Gwilym H. Jones, and Gwilym H. Jones
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...and the Day of Atonement, it was a purification rite. Fasting was a sign of penitence (see OCB ). Consequently, when the Philistines attacked Israel, they suffered a decisive defeat. The account in vv. 7–11 bears the marks of the holy war tradition: an enemy assault causing panic among the Israelites; petition by Samuel, accompanied by sacrifice; YHWH himself enters into battle and by a thunderstorm causes utter confusion among the Philistines; the Israelites pursue the disarrayed Philistines as far as Beth-car (probably to the west of Jerusalem in the...
