Moral Panics in Australian Media

Paper Summary:

This paper explains how Cohen?s concept of moral panic is helpful in understanding the media coverage of young people in Australian news media. It explains why it is necessary to mention media?s power to make things visible first to understand how and why media constructs prominent images of deviance on public agenda. While the media is drawing a stereotypical and stylized image of the group which is defined as the threat, methods of exaggeration, distortion and symbolization are used in the invention phase of the panics. Afterwards, the diagnoses and the solutions are offered by the social control mechanisms which instruct the inclusion and exclusion of certain elements of the society.

From the Paper:

"First of all, journalism's main effect derives from its ability to make things visible to the public, in either a positive or a negative way (McNair 1998, 49). News media defines which events or issues should be pointed out at by selectively reporting them. Even if the media do not directly determine what the public will think, what they will think about is described by the news (Entman cited in McNair 1998, 50). Thus, the public agenda is set out by what is on the news. What is left out by the news reporters should not be of concern, whereas there are issues to be thought about."

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