Media Effects and Moral Panics - Article Example

?Media effects and Moral Panics: Introduction: Media violence has increased dramatically over the of last couple of year. The number of cases have also increased in this regard and have severely impacted the moral standards of the society. Media and its importance today can’t be ignored. It has brought the world down on its knees. Media has made things very easy for the common man. Today while sitting at home, he has access to any information he wishes to access from all over the world. Globalization and overall increase in cross border activities round the globe have also made the world even more interconnected than ever before. Globalization has made the world a smaller place and has impacted the society dramatically. It has been largely aided by the media. While the media has played a big role in connecting the entire globe, there also instances of media violence which has crippled the entire nation and led to moral panics. The social cognitive theory incorporates behavioral factors both personal and environmental that have an impact on young mind. The media and its effect directly impact the non-environmental factors that work through an observational pattern of learning. Personal factors comprise of one’s wishes, his understanding of his self, his belief in himself, his motivation level and behavioral factors include the actions of an individual that have transpired from previous interactions. Reciprocal determinism is the term coined to depict the interaction of the aforementioned three aspects. (Karsh, 2009, p.34) In today’s time and age, there are various forms of entertainment and media available at the disposal of the young population. These include video games and other opportunities on the Internet. These opportunities give the young population enough access for gaining knowledge via observation. Moreover, the impact of aggression and aggressive modes of behavior on the young minds of children when exposed to violent senses and images is immense. The young minds feel the urge to replicate what they see. The primary idea of this paper is to depict how violence as projected by the media has a negative impact on the youth in the form of “moral panic. Moral panic becomes an issue when the observational learning experience goes on to become a direct threat to the social ethics and well being of a society. It then directs the mind of the youth in negative direction and severely impacts the well being of the society at large. Case Study: Moral panics are a condition, an episode in which a person of a group of persons emerge and come out as a defined threat to the values and interests of the society at large. (Cohen, 1972, p9). Moral panics occur mostly in times when the society is unable to cope up with the change and when the change brings about a fear of loss of control within the realms of the society structure. This trend was particularly evident in during the 1960s. That was when the society experienced many modernizing trends for instance, the sexual revolution. When events such as that took place during the 1960s are replicated, they arouse a growing concern that moral standards are declining and entire generations are demeaning and comprising on the society’s moral structure. There have many such cases in which young people have been associated in murder and killing cases. Interestingly, the victims have also been young people, or white skinned females. Such murders have given rise to a lot of media sensationalism. The killing in itself was a result of media projection of violent images in the first place in a lot of cases. However, today abduction by strangers is decreasing but abduction by family members and friends is increasing than ever before. One case in this regard was the murder of James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993). James Bulger was a boy who hailed from Kirkby England and was murdered on 12TH February, 1993 when he was just 2 years old. He was murdered, tortured and killed by two ten year old boys Robert Thompson and Job Venables. Bulger had disappeared from the Shopping Center in Bootle while he was on a shopping trip with his mother. Two days after the murder his body was discovered from a railway two and half miles away in Walton. The murderers were found guilty on 24th November, 1993 that made them the youngest murderers in English History. They were sentenced to Jail till they turned 18 after which they were released on a lifelong license in June 2001. The case prompted a lot of media attention and sensationalism. It also triggered debates regarding how to handle young offenders when they are sentenced or released from custody. There also a lot of media hype following the murder. CCTV evidence from the shopping center was shown all over. The boys (Thompson and Venables) had been playing truant from school all day, a practice that was a norm from them. They had been stealing around from the mall day. It was discovered later on found that the boys were looking around for a child to abduct, take him to a busy road in the mail and then push him on the path of heavy oncoming traffic. James was with his mother the same afternoon. While the mother was at the butcher’s shop around 3:40 pm, Densie realized that her son had disappeared. James had been lurking on the open door of the shop where she had placed the order and there he was spotted by the two murderers. They had approached him and led him out. All this was captured on the CCTV camera. The boys took Bulger around and brutally tortured him in the meanwhile. He suffered injuries on his face and they even joked about pushing him into the canal. They did attract attention from by passers and onlookers but no one intervened as everyone though he was their younger brother. Eventually the boys took Bulger to the village of Walton and began torturing him. They threw blue Humbrol pain on his left eye, threw bricks and stones at him and kicked and stamped on him. They also inserted battery in his month and finally a 10 kg iron bar was dropped in him. Bulger had suffered 10 skull fractures due to the iron bar striking his head and many other fatal injuries. It was also suspected that there was some sexual harassment in the crime as Bulger’s hoes, underpants, stockings and trousers had been removed. However, the convicts denied any instances of sexual assault in the murder. The boys then left Bulger on railway tracks and put his head down with the rubble to give the impression to the world that the train would hit him and the death was an accident. After they left the scene, Jame’s body was cut in half by the train. It was discovered two days later on 14th February and a forensic pathologist testified that the boy had died before the train had hit him. The police had also found images of Bulgers being abducted by the two boys at Strand Shopping Center. As the events that led to his death, the media and tabloid newspapers completely denounced the people who had seen Bulger but had not intervened to help. Media outcry and Moral Panics: The media raised a lot of hue and cry over the trial. The railway embankment on which the boy’s body was found was flooded with heaps of flowers and bouquets. The crime created a lot of anger in Liverpool and all over the country. As explained by Cohen, the society if often subjected to such instances and periods of moral panic. It is an occurrence which is characterized by stylized and stereotypical representation by the mass media. It also denotes the tendency of those in power to man the moral barricade and declare judgment. James Bulger who became a victim in the 1990s and for others this phenomenon has been in existence for quite some time under the notion of drugs and pedophilia. The path of moral panic created by the media, generally takes one of two possible directions. Either it dies a quiet death and is soon forgotten or it leads to more serious and lasting implications in the form of legislation or a social policy for instance the introduction of the National Sex Offenders Register in the late nineties in response to growing concern regarding child sex offenses. There is no surprise regarding why the murder of toddler James Bulger by two fellow children made headlines in all newspapers and created a lot of panic. According to Bradley, many analysts tried to show the murder as some bizarre gruesome act despite the fact that some statistics and figures show that such murders are very rare. However, it was definitely not the symbol of the modern Britain of nineties, but the media reaction to the murder was. (Bradley, 1994, p1). The point to be considered here is the fact that this case was not entirely out of the blue. There have been cases in the past in which children have killed other children. However what was new here was the role played by the media in triggering the national reaction to this tragedy. The media capitalized on the case of James to depict all that was wrong with Britain. As put by Bradley “‘as the media pursued each new sub-plot of the courtroom saga, it issued another little moral message for the nation to take on board: ‘it’s an evil world and we need strict rules’ (Bradley 1994: 1). Rational explanations regarding why the crime occurred in the first place was of no importance but the focus was on the difference between the innocent and the evil. A lot of hue and cry was raised; questions were asked pertaining to why the society let such an event unfold in the first place; what happened to the responsibilities of everyone as an active citizen and how everyone was guilty of the crime. Once the media had projected to the public many issues that were of moral and societal concern, there was little that the concerned citizen could say or oppose to various solutions for instance the installation of more surveillance cameras – which had played an instrumental role in tracing down the killers. There was no objection to stricter control on violent films and their banning because of the negative impact they have on the youth. When it was learnt that Child’s Play II was an inspiration from the crime, there was a lot of national panic in various newspapers and media circles calling for dramatic action against the movie. Sun reported “For the sake of all our kids…burns your video nasty”. This was followed by campaign in which all copies of the video in question were destroyed. There has been a lot of discussion regarding the resemblance of the pedophile scare of the nineties and the James Bulger’s case. It raised concerns regarding the extent to which the youth of today is under the media threat, and become victims of media violence. There is a general consensus within the society that there is a real threat that exists from the media circles to the youth of today due to their volatility and disproportionality. The actors who stage the moral panic however remain unaffected while kids on the other hand get further tempted. There should be strict adherence to some rules and guidelines for the media by the government regarding censoring of pictures and curtailing news that generate waves in the society and negatively affect the youth. The young population is particularly affected because they try to relate themselves with the victim and tend to act against the interest of the society by generating moral panic. It is important for these measures to be adopted because if they are not, their impact would only escalate such crimes and help them increase further. Thus it is important to ensure that there is strict adherence to rules and guidelines. Bibliography: Bradley, Ann (1994): ‘A Morality Play for Our Times’ (Living Marxism issue 63, January 1994). 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