Stanley Cohen's Theory

Stanley Cohen’s ideas stem from his study of ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’ in 1972. This study focuses on the way popular UK media and society reacted to the mods and rockers phenomenon.
Cohen is credited with coining the term ‘Moral Panic’ as a way to describe the way members of society or a culture becomes ‘morally sensitized’ to the challenges posed to their accepted values by the activities of a group defined as ‘deviant’
His theory underscored the importance of mass media in providing, maintaining and ‘policing’ the available frameworks and definitions of the ‘deviants’. The media is then able to create a moral panic through the way ‘deviants’ are portrayed.
Deviance Amplification is often utilised by the mass media when portraying ‘deviants’. This is the process by which the mass media exaggerate the extent and seriousness of deviant behaviour. This causes greater awareness and interest in deviance, which results in more deviance being uncovered. Thus allowing the media to report on the deviance more and more until a Moral Panic is created. – This could be viewed as a way for media, such as newspapers, to sell copies.
The media’s ability to create ‘Moral Panic’ means they are defined as ‘Moral Entrepreneurs’.
Cohen’s theory is based on Mods and Rockers but can be applied to any subculture labelled as ‘deviant’