The Cronulla Riots By Stanley Cohen: Moral Panics

A moral panic in Stanley Cohen’s terms defined as a social group of people coming together to create a threat to social values and interests. The social groups are a group of young people that are usually associated with youth, crime and violence which lead to moral alarms in the public. In serious events such as the Cronulla riots that occurred in 2005 and the middle eastern “ethnic gangs” that occurred in 1998-2000, the mass media plays a huge role in sending out an exaggerated message to the public which makes it known as a moral panic. Moral panics come from different frameworks such as sociology of law and social problems as well as the sociology of collective behavior (Cohen, 1987). Moreover, the different type of moral panic events is divided in either primary or secondary deviance
The Cronulla riots officially began after a physical clash between a group of four Lebanese young men and three lifesavers on the beach (Poynting, 2006). The lifesavers started the clash by verbally insulting the Lebanese young men which had led the Lebanese men to attack the lifesavers. The incident was reported onto commercial media, newspapers and more, the media spoke about the incident for almost a week. The Daily Telegraph is an Australian newspaper company which sent out the first step of a moral panic known as the looming threat producing race hate and crime. Also, the Daily Telegraph announced it as the ‘battle of the beach’ whereas the radio station announced it as the ‘community show of force’ (Poynting, 2006). The riot was essentially a battle to show the Lebanese people whose area there in and to who the beach belongs to. As Cohen (1987) states that the mass media possesses a society of ideas due to behavior as well as the information gathered defines what is so called the ‘news’ and how it should be structed and presented