Discuss and describe a moral panic from a social science perspective Essay Example for Free

Discuss and describe a example panic from a social science military position EssaySociety is frequently subjected to good panics when any crime is committed. Humanity repeatedly blows crimes and incidents out of remainder until the entire companionship is roughlywhat hold inled. Stuart Hall, in his book, Policing the Crisis explained that the media, in conjunction with the bourgeoisie, create moral panics in vow to perpetrate fear and maintain control over society, as a whole. (Hall, 2013, s. 1) incorrupt panics are created as a hazard and rising threat to shock twain society and culture into changing the focal point it thinks and acts about problems in the real world. In this essay, moral panics will be looked at in particular proposition with a specific interest in the flake of James Bulger. There will too, be a focus on the influence the media, police and politicians have on moral panics and public vistas.Stanley Cohen derived a moral panic as a sporadic episode which subjects society to worry about the values and principles which society upholds which may be in jeopardy. The moral panics are a means of characterising the reactions of the media, the public and agents of social control to youthful disturbances. (Cohen, 1987 9) The abduction and subsequent mutilate of the toddler James Bulger, from a shopping centre in Liverpool, was a crime which brought about a huge moral panic in Britain in the 1990s. A murder of any sort brings about a moral panic, but when the victim, and in this instance the defendants, are both children, it attracts overwhelming media attention and a vast moral panic is quickly scatter. It has been previously said that it is the almost monstrous of crime when a child elects to kill another child. Theories of moral panics are sparked when they are spread the Grassroots Model (Critcher, 2008) supposition occurs when the public and media collaborate, consequently leading to fears becoming exaggerated in the case of James Bulger ephebiphobia, which is the fear of children and youth. The murder of Bulger made parents realise how defenceless their own children really are, and how they should fear others children. The theory suggests panics are initiated and generated from the bottom up and are spread about particularly large numbers of people. This is afterwards shown in the murder of Bulger the moral panic was initiated from the crime but then soon spread to the media, thus advertising the story which then became public knowledge and the fear of children and youth becomes established and inflated.Marx established the elect(ip) Engineered Model which encompasses the ruling elitemanufacturing certain panics to instil fear in society and divert it off from the real problems they are having. In the scenario of the James Bulger murder, those with high ranking in society involved in the case, for example, police, detectives, press and politicians, created the moral panic of the murder in an attemp t to divert the publics opinion away from the shocking crime of two young boys, retributory 10 years old, not just abducting a toddler from a busy shopping centre in Liverpool, but likewise violent death him in the most vicious way and dumping his body on train tracks in an attempt to cover up what had happened. This is not the behaviour of children it is the behaviour of evil. Particularly due to the age of the killers, the barbarity of the crime and the age of the victim, the mass media reports allowed the public to get personally and emotionally involved in the case and have severe anger and resentment towards the children who murdered James Bulger. The public outcry was huge and, the termination by the politicians and press combined to release the names of the killers publicly as Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, allowed the public to finally broadcast their abuse against the killers. Amid the hysteria in 1993, both Thompson and Venables lost the right to be discernn as ch ildren, or level(p) as human. The kids who had killed the kid had to be killed, or indeed locked up for life. The word used about them stop all arguments they were pure evil. (Morrison, 2003) These scandals make any type of child harm seem dramatic and grievous these crimes force the attention onto those in society who are high ranked, in an attempt to aim for a change to pr slip this crime being repeated. The path of any moral panic can channel in two opposing directions either the panic dies down relatively quickly and is totally forgotten, or it has lasting repercussions for all those involved, whether press, politicians, the police or the public. (Butler, n.d.) In the case of the murder of little James Bulger, on that point were lasting implications which included the introduction of the National Sex Offenders Register (Paedophile Register) in the late 1990s as a response to the growing concern and panic over the recent child sex offences (Cohen 19729).The stake Group Theory involves panic about a given behaviour, in this instance, a child killing another child, and hence due the massive public outcry, the case is more likely to be malformed by the media and the outcomechanged. The Bulger story was iconic and a rare, uncommon case but lessons should be learnt. A similar crime had previously been committed in the form of the 1861 murder of baby George burgess in Stockport by two eight year olds. Burgess was forced to suffer a horrific lash out and the two young boys inflicted shocking injuries upon his body. This crime severely angered the local community and again created a moral panic. In todays society, thankfully due to the role that the media now plays in the display and promoting of crimes, we, as a whole in society, are able to successfully campaign for justice and see those who participated in the crime jailed for as long as they deserve. The concept of moral panics does have some disadvantages they do tend to be deterministic and can be twis ted by the media to blow the event out of proportion. In the case of James Bulger, the amount of media attention thrown onto the case means that this moral panic is ever lasting, and will always be remembered, preventing events like this from being repeated.BibliographyButler, I (2013) Moral dread and Child Protection forthcoming form http//www.moralpanicseminars.files.wordpress.com.2013/05/sem2-butler.pdf Accessed 15th November 2013 Cohen, S (2011) Folk Devils and Moral Panics Key Ideas. capital of the United Kingdom Routledge Critcher, C (2006) Moral Panics and the Media. OU PressCritcher, C (2008) Moral Panic Analysis Past, Present and Future Swansea University Blackwell Publishing. Available from http//www.penelopeironstone.com/Critcher.pdf Accessed 28th October 2013 Eldridge, J Kitzinger, J Williams, K (1997) The Mass Media and Power in Modern Britain (Chapter 5 Moral Panics, Media Scares and Real Problems) Oxford University Press Goode, E Ben-Yehuda, N (1994) Moral Panic s The Social Construction of Deviance. Cambridge, Massachusetts Blackwell Hall, S (2013) Policing the Crisis Mugging, the country and Law and Order. 2nd ed. Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan Jewkes, Y (2011) Media and Crime. SageKirsh, S (2010) Media and Youth. Wiley BlackwellMarsh, I Melville, G (2011) Moral Panics and the British Media A look at some contemporary Folk Devils