Deviance Amplification And Moral Panic

• Interactionist view of social control

  • Considers the role of the media in reactions to deviance
• Moral panic

  An exaggerated media response to a perceived threat
• Groups subject to moral panics

  • Mods and rockers
  • Football hooligans
  • Single parents
• Deviance amplification spiral

  The social reaction to the deviant act leads not to successful control of the deviance, but to further deviance, which in turn leads to greater reaction and so on
• Deviance amplification spiral

  Similar to Lemert's idea of secondary deviance
• Mod n Rockers

  Cohen’s most famous research into moral panics - ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’

  Increased violence between these two youth subcultures with different taste in clothes, music and mode of transport. These groups were turned into folk devils – groups who were demonised and portrayed as dangerous and threatening.