ABSTRACT
Stanley Cohen’s (2002) seminal work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers, first published in 1972, emphasized the crucial role of media interacting with control agents (such as police), politicians, action groups (moral entrepreneurs), and the public to construct the youth groups identified as the mods and the rockers as an exaggerated threat to society that greatly disturbed moral hegemony. Cohen alleged that the over-reaction from the police and others was actually counterproductive as folk devils often relished their new outsider status as social rebels. A few years later, the moral panic of mods and rockers faded into obscurity. However, Cohen indicated that the standardization of symbols representing their “devilish” behaviors provided the framework for the emergence of future moral panics.
