At the beginning of the decade, the term "Modernist" referred to a style of dress, and the term "Rocker" was hardly known outside the small groups that identified themselves this way. Five years later, a newspaper editor was to refer to the Mods and Rockers incidents as "without parallel in English history," and troop reinforcements were rumored to have been sent to quell possible widespread disturbances. A crucial dimension for understanding the reaction to deviance, both by the public as a whole and by agents of social control, is the nature of the information that is received about the behavior at issue. Such information comes to the public after having been processed by the mass media. This means that the information has been subjected to alternative definitions of what constitutes "news" and how it should be gathered and presented. The information is further structured by the various commercial and political constraints in which newspapers, radio, and television operate. Mods and Rockers were presented to the public in terms of episodes of collective behavior at English seaside resorts between 1964 and 1966. The public image of these "folk devils" was invariably yoked to a number of highly visual scenarios associated with their appearance: youths chasing across the beach, brandishing deck chairs over their heads, running along the pavements, riding on scooters or bikes down the streets, and sleeping on the beaches. In comparing public responses to these episodes with media and public responses to natural disasters, the chapter presents a sequence of public responses (moral panic) to information received on the Mods and Rockers. 33 notes