Moral panics can have a significant effect on the audience who hear about them, for example with a large usuage of drug use in Notting Hill, the area is being represented as an area where illegal mis-use of drugs is being taken place, giving it a bad name. Another example is the recent out break of swine flu, which was yet another moral panic, where a lot of people were being effected by the flu and made people 'panic'.
To an extent I do think that moral panics can help form or fragment cultural identity, as they do have a great deal of effect on a situation. For example if there was a sudden a high outbreak of teenage stabbings in a London, then the moral panic will bring out the conclusion that teenagers are uncontrolled and unruly thugs, which gives them this cultural identity.
Child abuse, Paedophillia and Raves are 3 types of moral panic, which the media will pick up on and trigger a 'panic' for the public which could ultimately end up with them looking at a certain culture differently. Paedophillia could be descirbed as a unique subject of moral panic, as it doesn't follow suit of the models of moral panics in that the process of moral panics goes along the lines of the problem emerges, is stereotyped and moralized about, experts are citied, new laws passed and the problem fades away, but paedophillia is unlikely to follow this as it is at a constant level compared to raves which does follow the model.
Paedophillia was first covered by the media in the 1980s and the term first came about, before the abusers would be known as beasts or monsters, but then during this time investigations realised that these people were to blaim for the organized abductions and murders of children. At this time the media stayed well away from the family and the child abducted or abused and very rarely had any coverage of them only the 'monster' who was being convicted, so at this point a moral panic wasn't as strong as it is today although this could be argued because we hear so much about these cases that its not really a moral panic in an extreame sense that children are locked in their homes or intense measures are made, unless we hear about an absolute extreame example. In 1988 child pornography became an official offence and the police created a child pornogrpahy squad, so the realisation of how much of a panic and threat paedophillia was had been established. The time in which paedophillia became an absolute moral panic and had a lot of media coverage was in 2000, the year Sarah Payne was sexually abused and murdered at just 8 years old. This crime triggered the coverage of paedophillia into more debt as it was an extreame example and certainly shocked the public most of the coverage was done by the News of the World who published a lot more on paedophillia and not just Sarah Paynes case, including a claim that parents have the right to know whether a sex offender lives in their area and the the act was named 'Sarah's law'. Eventually we have learnt to understand that paedophillia is a moral panic and should be taken extreamly serisouly, it changed a lot of ways today's society is look at and that its not a safe a place that it used to be, or atleast we know more about it.
Child abuse is similar to paedophillia in that it is related to the same kind of crimes in some cases (when its due to sexual abuse). Child abuse was appearing as the issue of the 'battered baby' syndrome in which pediatricians took notice, but it was not the doctors but the NSPCC that was needed to create a public awareness. Even then interest was only made between specialists until 1973, where a particular case was in extreame and so caught more attention. It was of a little girl called Maria Colwell and at just aged 7 her step-father beat her to death and was sentenced 8 years for it. A Sir Keith Joseph (minister for social security) kept the trial from recieveing a lot of coverage due to his favouring in a theory that inadequate parents produced inadequate children, which is called the 'Cycle of Deprivation theory' and later came to the conclusion that something had to be done about child abuse. Once the moral panic erupted the blame was put onto poor families and social workers, - the families because of the cycle of deprivation theory, and the social workers because the public thought that they were unable to guarentee children's physical safety. The media tore apart social workers claiming that they should not have let these adults be parents at all. The moral panic layed particuarly at the social workers, and people were afraid to trust them thinking they weren't doing their job properly and no child was truly safe. Even though childcare practice was reformed and had far more detailed proceedures child abuse in constantly being brought up again and again (just like paedophillia) and the very recent cases of Baby P are just one example.
My last case study is raves which were founded in New York, Chicago and Detroit but were also imported into Britain in 1988 they were always located in remote places and organised very discretly from the police to stop from being caught. At the end of the 80s it was seen as one of the biggest youth subculture Britain had ever seen and they generated vast amounts of money. The moral panic behind these raves, were the amount of drugs that these young adults were consuming, including Ecstasy, Amphetamine and LSD, what made it turn into a moral panic was the papers picking up on the amount of drugs used and stated such statements like 'a facade for dealing in drugs' and 'a cynical attempt to trap young people into drug dependency under the guise of friendly popular events'. What the papers failed to recognise was that these raves were innocent in their own right, and it was just the drugs that the kind of people attending brought with them, that made it an out-rage and therefore turning it into a moral panic. Then to fuel the panic even further the death of an 18 year old called Leah Betts, was blaimed on the kind of goings on at these raves. Betts died of water intoxication whicch is primarily in this case down to the use of drugs, and of course the public were shocked by the death. Betts parents wrote an open letter to teens on the dangers of drugs and let out pictures of the state of their daughter. So at this point the course of a moral panic, is well under way and the next step was for experts to contribute to the model, in 1994 after huge media pressure the public order act (1994) enabled polive to arrest anyone who, held an event, was waiting for an event, or refused police instructions to leave a rave site. During most of the rave era the government didn't take much notice and didn't 'care' about what was happening at these raves and for a long period they were completely uncontrable, which changed the cultural identity as in officials were letting teenagers and young adults go and take drugs freely, they were also giving these people reputations of drug users, and anti-social people.
So now we have looked at all 3 case studies, and the difference and similarities between them all are vast. Child abuse and Raves tend to follow the models of moral panics, and seem to be sustainable but when it comes to paedophillia it doesn't. These moral panics have changed the cultural identity of certain individuals and groups of people, with paedophillia the culture in which we live in today is a different one to when it was 40 years ago, where children were free to roam the streets with out the worry of being kidnapped or molested by paedophiles where as now, we are much more concerned about our children's saftey as we know more about it due to press coverage down to the moral panic. Child abuse, it now a lot more acknowledged and has made a lot of differences for child minders, teachers, parents and in particular social workers, where the blame was put on for the excuses as to why these defenseless children hadn't been cared for before it go to the stage where in some extreame cases children were being killed due to abuse. Paedophillia and child abuse are in the same, as in that they are still continuing on now, and that they are very unfortunately constant compared to raves which either have stopped completely or aren't seen as a moral panic anymore.
This is vastly compared to Somerstown which is British British British through out, with its grittyness and Britsh setting and actors, including Thomas Turgoose.