Children, Adults and Moral Panic

I’m afraid today finds me in a bad mood - that’s what comes of finding two interviews, essential raw material for a 1200 word article, have gone awol. I know, should’ve backed up. Well, well.

On the sociology front today - the media seems awash with comment about the latest proposals for CRB checks for adults working with or helping out voluntarily with children’s clubs. See below for a link and a question.

This article on the BBC website seems to provide a thorough report of some of the goings on.

My question is: isn’t the furore over paedophiles and CRB checks and the like, becoming tantamount to a continual, low-intensity moral panic?

I say ‘tantamount’ and ‘low intensity’ because in some ways it seems to me that current concerns don’t necessarily quite fit so easily into Cohen’s criteria. But maybe that points out another aspect of moral panics; they can and do go on and on, becoming chronic features of modern life.

And here are a few other questions for your consideration:

What does the coverage of these issues tell us:

1) About the media and how it works (hint - newsvalues?)

and

2) About the roles of adult and child in modern society

and finally, a harder question for those who want a bigger challenge

3) What does it tell us about how those roles have/are changing? Is the current and recent concern purely down to a ‘media effect’, or might it be something to do with the changed nature of our society? You might be able to develop some answers to this last question by finding out about the ideas of Ulrich Beck - and his view of the ‘risk society’ or the sociologist Anthony Giddens views about modernity.