What Is Stanley Cohen's Approach To Explaining Social Disorder

This essay will compare and contrast the approaches taken by Stanley Cohen (1973) and Stuart Hall et al. (1978) to explaining social disorder by firstly discussing what is meant by social disorder, who it applies to and the affect that it has on society. It will then look at the views of Stuart Hall et al. and their arguments surrounding the involvement of the media in social disorder, and it’s affects on society, whilst comparing them with those of Stuart Cohen before finally outlining any similarities and differences in their approaches and views.

Orderly behaviour or social order is a code of conduct that refers to social practices and structures that help maintain normal ways of living. Anything outside of this structure is seen as disorder
or antisocial behaviour. There are many forms of antisocial disorder some are seen as acceptable within society, such as speeding, and some are seen as unacceptable such as murder. Both are breaking the law but one has less of stigma then the other. Living in the UK today we are constantly met with phrases within the media such as “broken Britain” and “antisocial behaviour being out of control, and the government needs to step in to bring order back to the people of Britain. Even though all social scientists seem to agree that 'Social order is key principle of living together ' (Reflection on 'Ordered lives', 2009, Audio) and that disorderly behaviour involves perpetrators and victims, no common definition of such concepts can be concurred. Distinguishing between disorderly and orderly behaviours is therefore not straightforward.

Two studies one by Stanley Cohen and the other by Stuart Hall et al.
demonstrate how the effects of antisocial events reported in the media shape the attitudes and behaviours of the general public. The media played a very big part in the studies of both Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall et Al. They both drew upon the same conclusion that mediation influenced the ways in which the public reacted to antisocial behaviour. Stanley Cohen developed the idea of Folk Devils back in the 1960's when he studied the fights between the "Mods and Rockers" and the following media coverage and public outrage. Coming from South Africa he was struck by the media’s adaptation of the events, he was not use to the British headlines and confirms that the difference between the actual event and the media coverage was dramatic for him. 'It was from that that I developed the complicated parts of the theories. But, to be fair, it wasn’t just the discrepancy I stumbled on, I came, in a sense, looking for it, because much of the theory and ideas around at the time of, what was called labelling theory, worked on the idea that there simply was a difference between the thing, the object, and the way people reacted to it. And secondly, those discrepancies have some kind of pattern, they’re not just random.' (The making of order and disorder, 2009,
Audio)

The Media has the power of educating people, since it effects the eyes, the ears and the mind nothing can be done to overcome the influence of the media. In our modern society the media portrays and feeds the general population with occurrences happening throughout the UK on a daily basis. They appear to grasp hold of the issues of the moment and highlight things continuously. For example dangerous dogs within society, these were highlighted in the press and the media to such an extent that politicians took these issues and brought in new laws to control this act of social behaviour. 'One example of a new law relating to disorder was the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 (Lodge and Hood, 2002). This was passed after several incidents of serious injuries inflicted by aggressive dogs.' (Kelly and Toynbee, 2009, p.355) This new law was only passed after the tabloid press exposed many incidents of attacks which led to widespread public concern. It is the media which keeps the people updated and informed about what’s happening around them and the world. Everyone can draw something from it. Media also limits peoples thinking capacity although it projects lot of ideas and views of people from different streams of life. This affects the youth in the society who lack in experience and sometimes blindly believe in what they listen to. And many times the news covered are over exaggerated and it seldom concentrates on the area which needs real attention, by doing so it diverts the societies attention away from the actual problem.

Stanley Cohen suggests that the media depiction of anti-social behaviour helps to construct folk devils. Folk devils become the focus of public fears and anxieties. They are made to stand for wider problems and concerns and, in the process, become the figures who exemplify ‘what is wrong with society today’. Today’s folk devils might be the ‘yobs’, ‘hoodies’, ‘yobettes’ or ‘alco-yobs’ referred to in newspaper headlines. In Cohen’s original study they were the ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’, members of two youth cultures who sometimes fought each other and attacked seaside shops in mid-1960’s Britain. 'Cohen argued that the portrayal of folk devils in the media creates a moral panic in society at large whereby people are both terrified and outraged.' (Kelly and Toynbee, p.370)

Stuart Hall and colleagues bases their study on Cohen's concepts and argued that the mediation of disorderly behaviour led to the belief that society was in a ‘crisis’.
The Policing the Crisis (1978) of Stuart Hall et al. akin to Cohen, agreed that the media’s orchestration of antisocial behaviour creating a moral panic which he termed ‘A Sense of Crisis’. However, society then evolved to a ‘Law and Order society’ as the social factors in Hall et al. theory were inequality, social crisis and the interest of the state in diverting the attention away from these factors unlike Cohen where the social factors was a 'deep-seated culture of anxiety'

One similarity between the two theories is that they both investigate the structure of specific forms of anti-social behaviours. They also both recognised the existence of street violence and they were both concerned about how it became described and represented by the media, amplified or defined. In both investigations there is a particular attention on how the media influence the public view of events and how public perceive
changes.

Hall et al. started to investigate events in the media, based on the theory of moral panic but the social factors that they look at are different. Cohen is interested on the settled, rooted culture of fear and anxiety while Hall et al. focused on how the state divert attention away from real causes, inequality created and social crisis. In addition Hall et al. are focused on 'policing and crisis' and on how a deep sense of crisis can be created by negative media portraying.

Although both studies are looking at the effect that media has on violence, they are observing different types of violence under different circumstances which makes it difficult to compare their findings. Both theories used different ways to construct an argument and this may have influenced the outcomes of their work. Cohen has failed in providing a wider explanation of why the media portrayed his ‘folk devils’. Moreover, this theory did not consider what people selected from the media when assessing information. In contrast, the theory from Hall et al. offered a view that achieved the extra mile when adding more complex social components to their work. Although they did not pay attention to the way means of information had been selected by the same fault seen in Cohen‘s study.

In conclusion the two theories which illuminate the media's role in social disorder have many similarities, as the two groups of researchers analyse the role of media in relation to social disorder. The similarities are mainly sited in the observation of how media can influence public to the level of stereotyping a certain group in the society or creating themselves social disorder. The contrast mainly resides in investigating the reasons to induced moral panic: Hall is more detailed and more interested about the consequences of moral panic and Cohen was generally focused on how people generate social anxiety.