英语论文网

y is being threatened by behaviours that are out of the norm. This shows that a deviant behaviour can be powerful enough as to instigate creation and the enactment of laws in a society (Ben-Yehuda, 1990: 124). However, it is important to note that these agents cannot function alone to create moral panics in the society, they need the mass media to be able to pass across what they deem as morally wrong or evil so, they take advantage of the media to be able to create a moral panic (Ben-Yehuda, 1990: 116). It thus seems that without the media, moral panics may never occur and 'amplitude' plays a major role in such a development. Cohen (1980:16) describes the media as an 'especially important carrier and producer of moral panics'. He states that information that gets to the public have already been processed by the media, that is to say that they have been subject to classifications of newsworthiness and how they are to be relayed to the audience. 

He argues that what is usually called news focuses on reports on deviance and its consequences and such reports create 'concerns, anxiety, indignation or panic.' When these feelings have been created, the need to protect certain moral values arises and this leads to the definition of the problem and the creation of rules to protect societal values. All that has been said boils down to the fact that for the media to cover an event successfully as news, amplitude (as a news value) plays a very important role. As earlier defined, amplitude refers to how big and dramatic the event is (Watson, 1998: 118; Galtung and Ruge, 1965: 66) so the need for amplitude leads the media to amplify deviance whereby exaggerating the event so it becomes a very big issue through the reaction of the audience. O'Sullivan, et al. (1994:10-11) define amplification as the 'process whereby initial activity, labelled as deviant is increased or 'amplified' as a result of social reaction which is largely co-ordinated and articulated by the mass media.'

Furthermore, Galtung and Ruge (1965: 71) state that there are three things the media does to manufacture news and one of them is 'accentuation' or distortion and that is to make the event even more noticeable. Cohen (1980: 31) gives examples of this kind of distortion or exaggeration. In describing the Mods and Rockers event at Clacton, he states that a journalist from the Daily Mirror admitted that the event had been over reported. Cohen describes how the media 'grossly exaggerated' its seriousness;

Over-reporting...the number taking part, the number involved in violence and the amount and effects of any damage or violence. Such distortion took place primarily in terms of the mode and style of presentation characteristic of most crime reporting: the sensational headlines, melodramatic vocabulary and heightening of those elements in the story considered as news. The regular use of phrases such as 'riot', 'orgy of destruction', 'battle', 'attack', 'beat up town' and 'screaming mob' left an image of a besieged town from which innocent holidaymakers were fleeing to escape a marauding mob.

This event was so exaggerated that the police began making preparations for the本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。