ABSTRACT
Much has been made in the literature on moral panics – scares about ‘a threat or supposed threat from deviants or “folk-devils”’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009: 2) – of the role elite and/or expert ‘claims-makers’ play in fanning the flames of popular hysteria (Cohen 1972). In Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Cohen 1972), Stanley Cohen’s study of the furore surrounding the clashes between Mods and Rockers in early 1970s English seaside resorts, he popularised the idea that panics were generated and/or sustained not so much by the indisputable drama of authentic events but by the alarmist pronouncements of politicians, law enforcers, ‘moral entrepreneurs’ such as residents’ groups and community campaigners, and the news media. Hall et al. (1978) took the claims-maker concept further in Policing the Crisis, by analysing the claims leading to an explosion of public concern about a purported spate of mugging by black youths, also in the early 1970s. They concluded that this (largely bogus) phenomenon was socially constructed by an alliance of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary definers’ – chiefly government ministers, judges, the police and journalists.
