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A wet bank holiday weekend in Clacton: some fights broke out on the beach, huts were damaged and somebody fired a starting pistol. Hardly a riot, but that was how the media reported it. Reading the reports, Stan Cohen thought it would be an ideal case study for the newly evolving labelling theory.

He describes his research in a number of seaside resorts, ploughing through newspaper reports, visiting social control agencies in suit and tie and changing to do participant observation research on the beaches in the clubs.

Cohen illustrates the distorted media reporting of mods and rockers, the ensuing panic and how this amplified the phenomenon itself by giving the kids a ‘script’ to perform in front of the cameras. In the final section he looks back at the book’s contribution, and particularly at the concept of moral panic.

This programme will be relevant to those studying, crime and deviance, media and culture and research methods.