7.3 Moral Panics

• What are Wall's 4 categories of cyber crime?


  Cyber-tresspass - crossing boundaries into someone else's Cyber-property

  Cyber-deception

  Cyber-pornography

  Cyber-violence - inciting psychological or physical harm such as cyber-bullying
• What did Jewkes say about types of crime?


  The internet creates opportunities to commit both 'conventional crimes' and 'new crimes using new tools
• What do McRobbie & Thornton say to criticise moral panics?


  Moral panics are now routine and have less impact in a desensitised late modern society, and with increased individualisation there is less consensus about what is deviant
• What is the Functionalist perspective on moral panics?

  Moral panics are a response to feelings of anomie, and by dramatising the threat to society as a folk devil the media strengthens the collective consciousness and reasserts social control
• What is the wider context?- Cohen

  -The mods and rockers conflict is based in post-war British society in which the affluence of young people challenged the values of older generations who had lived through the 30s and 40s

  -Moral panics often occur at times of social change when accepted values feel undermined
• Deviance Amplification Spiral- Cohen


  The portrayal of the mods and rockers conflict in the media created an amplification spiral in which it was viewed as getting out of hand which led to calls for stricter policing, which further marginalises the two groups
• Mods and Rockers - Cohen


  Disorder was relatively minor with a few broken windows but the media produced a stocktake of what happened with exaggeration, prediction of further violence & symbolisation- the symbols of the groups were all associated with deviance even when they were separate
• What did Jukes say about how policing cyber crime is becoming easier?


  ICT permits routine surveillance and digital footprints are collected
• How is policing cyber crime difficult?

  The internet is so huge and so globalised which poses problems with jurisdiction, and the police culture also deprioritises cyber-crime as it is seen to lack the excitement and immediacy of more conventional policing