AC1.5 Writeup
One impact of media representation is moral panic. Moral panic is a collective
feeling of distress or panic felt by society due to information being shown by
media which could cause disruptions in the peace of society. An example of
when the media has caused a moral panic was in the case of the mods and
rockers. The mods and rockers were two separate gangs that had minor fights
against each other in beachside resorts, the media seized the opportunity to
sensationalise the fights by using exaggerative, aggressive language like
‘mugging, looting, gangs, villains and carjacking’. It was also mentioned the
media lied about things like the number of arrests, one headline read “Wild
ones invade seaside town – 97 arrests” when in fact, there were only 24
arrests. With this exaggerated and sensationalised telling of the mods and
rockers: society was thrown into a moral panic, with the harsh wording by the
media causing people to feel anxious and scared. This shows that media can
lead to moral panic as a minor act of deviance which is seen as interesting to
the media can be warped and sensationalised to the point that the panic of
society causes the problem to actually magnify like in the case of the mods and
rockers, where increasing in policing caused further disruptions which only
made matters worse.
Another impact of media representation is stereotyping certain individuals to
certain crimes; stereotyping is generalising a certain action, belief or behaviour
to certain things or people. Stereotyping is usually done in a negative sense
and is very frequent in media, an example of stereotyping caused by the media
is in the case of islamophobia which is a disliking or prejudice against someone
because they believe in Islam and are a Muslim. On the 29th of October 2020,
BBC News reported on a ‘Islamic terrorist’ attack in France where three people
died with one who was said to be ‘virtually beheaded’. The attack was labelled
as an ‘Islamic’ terror attack and really focused on them being Islamic terror
attacks over normal terrorist attacks. This therefore shows that the media can
cause stereotyping because the focus on the attack in France being ‘Islamic’
has led to many people stereotyping Muslims as terrorists thus leading to a lot
of racism and islamophobia, which wouldn’t be as magnified if it wasn’t for the
media catalysing the stereotypical view.
One impact of media representation is moral panic. Moral panic is a collective
feeling of distress or panic felt by society due to information being shown by
media which could cause disruptions in the peace of society. An example of
when the media has caused a moral panic was in the case of the mods and
rockers. The mods and rockers were two separate gangs that had minor fights
against each other in beachside resorts, the media seized the opportunity to
sensationalise the fights by using exaggerative, aggressive language like
‘mugging, looting, gangs, villains and carjacking’. It was also mentioned the
media lied about things like the number of arrests, one headline read “Wild
ones invade seaside town – 97 arrests” when in fact, there were only 24
arrests. With this exaggerated and sensationalised telling of the mods and
rockers: society was thrown into a moral panic, with the harsh wording by the
media causing people to feel anxious and scared. This shows that media can
lead to moral panic as a minor act of deviance which is seen as interesting to
the media can be warped and sensationalised to the point that the panic of
society causes the problem to actually magnify like in the case of the mods and
rockers, where increasing in policing caused further disruptions which only
made matters worse.
Another impact of media representation is stereotyping certain individuals to
certain crimes; stereotyping is generalising a certain action, belief or behaviour
to certain things or people. Stereotyping is usually done in a negative sense
and is very frequent in media, an example of stereotyping caused by the media
is in the case of islamophobia which is a disliking or prejudice against someone
because they believe in Islam and are a Muslim. On the 29th of October 2020,
BBC News reported on a ‘Islamic terrorist’ attack in France where three people
died with one who was said to be ‘virtually beheaded’. The attack was labelled
as an ‘Islamic’ terror attack and really focused on them being Islamic terror
attacks over normal terrorist attacks. This therefore shows that the media can
cause stereotyping because the focus on the attack in France being ‘Islamic’
has led to many people stereotyping Muslims as terrorists thus leading to a lot
of racism and islamophobia, which wouldn’t be as magnified if it wasn’t for the
media catalysing the stereotypical view.
