How do you feel about

Knife Crime?
Alarm is growing that Britain
faces an unprecedented wave
of knife crime among teenagers
following the murder of 15
London youngsters so far this
year. The worry for police and
parents is that a vicious cycle is
beginning: the more headlines
there are about knife crime, the
more youngsters start to carry
blades for their own safety.

- The Independent (2008)

 Yr 12 OCR Media Studies
Audience: Moral Panics

Learning Objectives:
1. To explore how the media acts as an agent
of moral panics
 Moral Panic Defined…
According to Key Concepts in Communication
(O'Sullivan, Fiske et al 1983)

"Moral panics then, are those processes whereby

members of a society and culture become 'morally
sensitized' to the challenges and menaces posed to
'their' accepted values and ways of life, by the activities
of groups defined as deviant. The process underscores
the importance of the mass media in providing,
maintaining and 'policing' the available frameworks and
definitions of deviance, which structure both public
awareness of, and attitudes towards, social problems."
 Moral Panics and the Media
Moral panics have several distinct features:
• Concern - There must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or
category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
• Hostility - Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they
become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us".
• Consensus - Though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must
be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real
threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs"
are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganised.
• Disproportional - The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat
posed by the accused group.
• Volatility - Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as
quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports
changing to another topic.
Moral Panics and Audiences
TASK: Read a newspaper article and write a
PEE paragraph to answer the following
questions:
• What is denoted in the article that connotes a
moral panic?
• How are the audience targeted by the article?
• Why do you think the journalist/editor created a
sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the article?
‘The media is responsible for causing fear and
panic in society’
OR
‘The media informs its audiences and helps
establish consensus in society’.

Which of the statements above do you agree

with, why?