Crime : Cohen -Interactionist

• Cohen showed the media played a huge part in creating moral panics. He focused on the Mods and the Rockers of the 1960's - two groups that were at odds with one another. Cohen suggests that the media at the time had no major stories to report and therefore built up these two groups into Folk Devils (group seen as trouble makers).
• Cohen suggests that at the end of the media coverage young people were more or less made to categorise themselves as one or the other which in turn helped to create the violence that took place. In 1964, at Clacton, the Mods and the Rockers previously mixed although boredom, lack of facilities and bad weather meant they split up and fought.
• At Whitsun, in Margate in 1964, there were two minor stabbings and the following day the headline was "smearing the traditional postcard scene with blood". What Cohen is getting at is how the media exaggerates and distorts the true facts. Cohen claimed the media exaggerated facts such as the number of people involved and the scale and seriousness of the event. Cohen was aiming to demonstrate how the media made the Mods and Rockers look bad in the public eye through using the media to create public reaction.