*OPTION 2 – Youth subcultures
Outline two reasons why the media create moral panics about youth deviance.
OCR
A Level
2022
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Outline: Moral Panics and Youth Deviance
This essay explores two key reasons why the media create moral panics about youth deviance, drawing on sociological perspectives to analyze the role of media in constructing and perpetuating these anxieties.
1. News Values and the Social Construction of News
News values, the criteria used to determine what is newsworthy, play a crucial role in shaping moral panics. Sensationalist stories about young people's deviant behavior often align with news values such as immediacy, novelty, and negativity. This creates a bias towards portraying youth as problematic, fueling public anxieties and potentially overlooking other important social issues.
Interactionist theory highlights the social construction of news, where journalists actively select and interpret events, shaping public understanding. The "silly season" exemplifies this, where media outlets focus on less serious stories during periods of inactivity, often targeting young people.
2. Labelling and Stereotyping: Creating Folk Devils
Labelling theory emphasizes the role of power in shaping social perceptions. The media often labels groups of young people as "folk devils," associating them with deviant behavior. This can be seen in the "hoodies" moral panic (Fawbert) or the portrayal of certain ethnic minorities as threats (Abbas).
Stereotyping further reinforces these negative images, generalizing about entire groups based on limited and often inaccurate information. These processes can lead to moral panics because they create a climate of fear and prejudice, encouraging social control measures against young people.
Examples and Specific Moral Panics
To illustrate these points, the essay will analyze specific moral panics. For example, Cohen's study of Mods and Rockers demonstrated how media exaggeration and labelling fueled anxieties. Thornton's analysis of the "ravers" panic shows how the media construct a narrative of danger and threat, while Hall's work on the "mugging" moral panic highlights how the media can be used to distract from wider societal issues.
Conclusion
The media play a significant role in creating moral panics about youth deviance. News values, the social construction of news, and the power of labelling and stereotyping all contribute to the perception of young people as a threat. These processes can have real consequences, leading to social control measures and prejudice against youth, often overlooking the complexities of their experiences and motivations.
Outline two reasons why the media create moral panics about youth deviance.
The media plays a significant role in shaping societal perceptions, particularly regarding youth deviance. While aiming to inform, the media can sometimes amplify and distort issues, leading to moral panics. Two key reasons for this are the media's reliance on "news values" to sell content and the inherent process of social construction that underpins news production.
Firstly, the media operates within a capitalist system where profit drives content creation. Sensationalized stories, often focused on youth deviance, attract larger audiences and, consequently, more revenue. This aligns with the concept of "news values," which prioritizes elements like negativity, unexpectedness, and threat. Young people, particularly those belonging to identifiable subcultures, become easy targets. The media often portrays them as a threat to social order, amplifying relatively minor acts of deviance into symptoms of societal decline. This was evident in Stanley Cohen's study of "Mods and Rockers," where media exaggeration of minor scuffles between youth groups created a nationwide moral panic.
Secondly, the media doesn't simply reflect reality but actively constructs it through the selection and framing of information. This process, rooted in interactionist perspectives, highlights how social issues are not objective but rather defined and amplified through societal interactions, including media representations. The concept of the "silly season" exemplifies this, referring to periods when news outlets, starved for impactful stories, latch onto and inflate minor incidents, particularly those involving youth deviance. This can lead to the creation of folk devils, where specific groups, often young people embracing alternative subcultures, are demonized and stereotyped based on exaggerated or even fabricated accounts. This was evident in the media's portrayal of "hoodies" as symbols of youth menace, fueled by anecdotal evidence and fear-mongering, as explored by Fawbert.
In conclusion, the media's pursuit of profit through sensationalized news, coupled with the social construction of deviance through selective reporting and stereotyping, contributes significantly to moral panics surrounding youth subcultures. This tendency to exaggerate and distort, driven by commercial interests and the inherent nature of news production, underscores the media's powerful influence in shaping public perception and potentially exacerbating social divisions.
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AO1: Knowledge and Understanding
The following list is indicative of possible factors/evidence that candidates may refer to but is not prescriptive or exhaustive:
- As a consequence of “news values” – selling news.
- The social construction of news – the “silly season”. Reference interactionist views.
- Labelling – and creation of folk devils – interactionist views.
- Stereotyping. Eg. Islamobphobia. Link to interactionism.
- Neo-Marxist view – as a distraction to problems actually caused by capitalism (refer to Hall and the mugging moral panic).
- Reference to specific moral panics in explanation e.g. Fawbert – Hoodies, Abbas – Islamaphobia, Cohen – Mods/Rockers, Thornton – Ravers, Young - Hippies
- Any other relevant point
AO2: Application
The selected knowledge should be directly related to the specific question.