Studying Moral Panics: Labeling Theory

In this blog, we will be exploring the moral panic thesis and how it affects us in our daily lives. A moral panic is defined as public feelings of panic and alarm in response to deviant or criminal behaviors. However, these criminal or deviant behaviors in most cases do not warrant such an exaggerated response. To further illustrate a moral panic we will be focusing on licit and illicit drug use. Even though this is a serious topic and the use of drugs that have not been prescribed to an individual is highly dangerous. Nonetheless, an outbreak of public hysteria over the believed increase of drug use, when there is statistical evidence that drug use is declining is unwarranted. We have all seen at least one news article reporting on stories about drugs and crime that seem to be exaggerated. 

Do we shape our own opinions or are we being influenced by what the media would like us to believe? Most people receive all of their information from the news, but the stories they report on are often not based on statistical evidence and may be more biased than you originally thought. And let’s face it: nothing sells news like a good moral panic. What even is a moral panic? First, we must understand what moral panic even is. Moral panic is the definition used to describe the public feelings of panic and alarm in response to deviant or criminal behaviors that are being misrepresented or dramatized in the media. The term moral panic has only become widely used since the work of Stan Cohen in the 1970s. Essentially, anything can be a moral panic, as long as the deviant behavior is being sensationalized in the media. This sparks fear as the issue is being depicted as threatening the moral standards in society. To further understand moral panic we will be using drug use as an example. 

Further understanding moral panic A key criminologist that was interested in the moral panic phenomenon was Stanley Cohen, who wrote the book Folk devils and moral panics in 1972, which was updated in 2002. Cohen was influenced by Becker and labeling theory, which lead him to research and, be particularly interested in the discrepancies between media responses and the actual event. A quick look at Becker and labeling theory. Howard Becker was born in the 1960s and came up with the labeling theory, which is similar to moral panic and social constructionism. It is the process by which a person is understood to have broken a rule and therefore committed a crime. Becker also differentiates between insiders and outsiders. Insiders are those who have not committed crimes or partaken in deviant behavior and outsiders are those who have. There are different degrees of being an outsider, depending on how many offenses and what the nature of the crime was. Once an individual has been successfully labeled they may choose how to interpret their label. Many accept their label but some rebel. It has been proven that putting a label on an individual puts them in a box, which means many only identify as the label. 

This is an important theory when studying moral panics. In the example of licit and illicit drug use, the people partaking in this behavior are only seen as drug addicts, not as individuals. This makes it easier to group people as dangerous drug users instead of looking at the person's case individually. Cohen argued that the media construct a narrative of a villain, in his study violent youth subcultures, were considered 'mods and rockers' or folk devils. The way he explained moral panic was that it was an over sensationalization of deviant behavior by the media that sparks debate over morality. Moral panic is a sort of media hype that could be explained by deviancy amplification. The constant reporting and exaggeration of deviant or criminal behavior can lead to moral panic. What even is the fear of crime? To fully understand moral panics we need to understand what even is the fear of crime. Fear is an emotional response to a situation, which invokes a sense of danger. To elicit fear the situation and environment must also relate to the individual's perceptions of crime and fear. The fear of crime is a never-ending yet forever-changing phenomenon, which can be studied but never fully explained.