Stanley Cohen's Folk Devils And Moral Panics

Moral panic is something that really does have an effect on everyone within society; whether that is personal to the individual, where they feel the panic themselves, or second hand where the moral panic has lead to decisions being made that later affect them in some way. In Stanley Cohen’s book - Folk Devils and Moral Panics, he highlights the basic meaning of moral panic as “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” A very modern example of this is the EU Referendum vote and Brexit.
The media’s role in constructing a moral panic is somewhat limited, it does very little to actually construct it and does a lot more to contribute to an already existing issue. The media would not publish a story that would create a moral panic within society unless they had the back up from a public voice that has authority within the issue. This could be a professional in the field of the story or in the case of Brexit more likely a Politician.
2009) have been deliberated for years. These sociologists believe that the elite notices a situation that should cause a moral panic, the voice with authority then raises the issue publicly, that can then be reported on by the media to spread an already existing moral panic. An issue with this process is it makes it rather easy for the elite to manipulate circumstances to fit their agenda’s; this was very prominent during the EU Referendum vote. “The classic orthodox Marxist approach is an ‘elite-engineered’ model. It argues that the elites ‘engineer’ moral panics so they will gain some material or status advantage there from” (Goode, E & Ben-Yehuda, N.