Moral Panic

The reading for this week was based on moral panics, which beforehand I saw as a very interesting subject seeing as numerous counts of moral panics are centred around youths and their initial impact on the present society.

The reading gives one example of how the youth were portrayed during a moral panic during the 1960's with the Mods and the Rockers, “the Mods and the Rockers, that took place in several English seaside towns in 1964 became, in the national media, a sign that gang violence represented a new and unprecedented threat to public safety.” (Krinksy:1) In fact this was not the case, only minor skirmishes happened between the two so called gangs and some people blamed the press for over exaggerating what actually happened throughout the sixties. Which leads me to my next point of who actually has the most control of a moral panic, I have come up with four types of groups who are involved:
1.The Offenders
2.The Public
3. The Press
4. The Government
I personally that the press have the most power when it comes to circulating and getting attention towards a moral panic, yes the offenders do cause a problem and sometimes the public to react in certain ways and after it has been established that whatever has gone wrong is a moral panic then the government do get involved and change certain legislation to help combat that problem. But it is the press who keep on hounding at a certain issue, forcing their own opinions onto the public and therefore that outcry onto the government.

A recent example of a moral panic was during last summers London Riots, which once again centred mainly around 'The Youth of Today', but what was also interesting was how the social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry Messenger came under heavy fire from the police and government officials for helping to organise potential riots throughout certain areas in London. Once the press got a hold of this news that some youths were using these sites to organise meet ups they ran the story of banning these sites during the riots. Could we argue that some stories are heavily shown to the public to one day help take there freedoms away? I don’t' want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but that seems to be the case.

In conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed this reading as in some cases the author seemed to be sticking up for the youth and their portrayal throughout all senses of media which is a brave thing to do in my honest opinion.

The Reading - Krinsky, C – Moral Panics over Children and Youth - 2008