1. Topic Area


Crime and The Media


2. Proposed title, question, hypothesis





3. Teacher approval granted, in principal?





4. Principle texts (if text based study)
Case studys:
teenage magazines
Teletubbies
Mods and rockers
penny dreadfuls


5. Reason for choice
The censorship unit which i found interesting and enjoyable i decided do something we had covered duirng it.


6. Academic context for this study (similar research, relevant theory, named theorists)
Stanley Cohen
deviancy spiral
The efftects model
the grass roots model
the elite-engineered model
the interest group model.
Cause and effect/hypodermic needle theory
cultivation theory introduced by George Gerbner.

7. Institutional context for this study (industry focus, other texts for comparison, named practitioners, relevant theory, issues, questions)
The effect on


8. Identify the audience context for this study (audience profile, access to audience, potential sample)
Audience responce to text
A wide aged audience as moral panics occur throughout history and effect different ages,
questionaires, surveys on how they react to texts, and how they think moral panics affect there tjhoughts on social problems.
It would be good to look at twio different generations i.e teenagers and then the parent generation.

9. How will the 4 key concepts be relevant to your study (audience, institution, forms and conventions, representation)?

Institution - Media (film/TV/magazines) makers how it affects there creativity - teletubies
press- there involvement in causing moral panics, and there motives

Audience - Their consuming the media (magazines/TV programmes and films) that the 'panic' is over (teenage magazines increasing teenage pregnacy, jamie bulger case) It is the general public that are affected and it is their oppinions that cause society to view a certian aspect negativly.

How representation of certain groups are potrayed in long term morale panics e.g youth binge drinking, homesexuals in teletubbies and aids pandamic. - How these are exgagerated causing moral panics over certian type of people, mods and rockers, due to one event caused mistrust of them, and a holligan name for them. More recently the banning of hoodies in blue water, due to the fear of hooded teenagers.


10 Potential research sources (secondary): secondary academic books and websites, secondary industry books and websites, secondary popular criticism. Please identify specific examples you have come across.


Stanley Cohen in “Folk Devils and Moral Panics” (1972)
Romancing the Tomes, Popular Culture, Law and Feminism By Thornton
Media and Crime By Yvonne Jewkes
Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance
The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements By James M. Jasper
Youth Culture in Late Modernity By Johan Fornäs, Göran Bolin


11. Potential research sources (primary): audience reception research, your own content/textual analysis etc12. Modifications agreed with your lead teacher
Surveys on internet, questionaires
one to one interveiws


13. Potential limits/obstacles/problems?


14. Teacher concerns


15. Teacher approval