Moral Panic

Moral panic is a sociological phenomenon where a collective anxiety arises within a society, typically in response to perceived threats against its traditions and values. Coined in 1972, the term illustrates how certain groups—often labeled as "folk devils"—are scapegoated for societal changes that provoke fear or discomfort. The media plays a crucial role in this process by amplifying narratives around these perceived threats, which can stem from various interest groups, elites, or grassroots movements.

The evolution of moral panic has led scholars to debate its relevance in contemporary society, where definitions of right and wrong have become increasingly ambiguous. Often, moral panics may not reflect actual threats but rather serve as mechanisms of social control, reinforcing existing power dynamics. While some argue that moral panics are rooted in cultural strains caused by social change, others express concern that labeling certain anxieties as moral panic can overlook more complex underlying issues. As society continues to grapple with diverse values and beliefs, the discourse surrounding moral panic remains dynamic and contentious, inviting further exploration of its implications and effects on social cohesion.

Published in: 2021

By: Thompson, Sherry

Subject Terms

Moral Panic

Coined in 1972, the term Moral Panic was first meant to describe how the public comes to a collective panic over threats to societal traditions and values. Moral Panics always involve the utilization of the media as the transmitter of information to society. Moral Panics can be initiated by Interest Groups, Elites, or Grassroots groups. However, the Interest Groups and Elites must have the support of Grassroots groups (and vice versa) if the Moral Panic is to be maintained. The term has evolved along with American society and now appears to be somewhat lacking in meaning. A constructionist American society seldom agrees on what is right and wrong and some writers claim the act of panic is actually veiled oppression. Media is acknowledged as the unchallenged transmitter of moral panic topics and various interest groups have identified the means to use the media to spin the notion of morality to fit their own needs.

Keywords Anecdotal; Collective Behavior; Constructionist; Deviant; Fear Politics; Folk Devil; Hegemony; Interest Groups; Mass Media; Morality; Oppression (Psychology); Panic; Prime Mover; Social Anxiety; Social Psychology; Social Structure

Moral Panic

Overview

Coined in 1972, the term, Moral Panic, was first meant to describe how the public comes to a collective panic over threats to societal traditions and values (Cohen, 1972). Over the past two decades the term has evolved to encompass somewhat more and somewhat less than its originator author intended. Cohen crafted the following definition of Moral Panic:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person, or groups of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by politicians, religious leaders, and others; ways of coping are evolved; the condition then disappears, submerges, or deteriorates and becomes more visible (Cohen, 1972, p. 9).

Moral Panic: A Sociological Phenomenon

Moral panic is a phenomenon that occurs once in a while. It appears in a non-random and non-regular pattern and its appearance cannot be forecast based on past patterns. Prior to the beginning of the moral panic, an entity (or group) will be identified as acting in a deviant way or promoting beliefs that create threats to the homeostasis of values existing in the society. This is the point in time when societal members become aware of how the society may be altered by the actions of the entity. In the past, social mores were carefully guarded and corrected within the context of a community. Community members were fairly homogeneous in how they dressed, believed, and acted. Values such as living in nuclear family groups, keeping children and women under control, shared religious beliefs, and showing respect to one's elders and leaders were shared by all community members. Threats to these values emerged in the form of social change which was creating social anxiety in the community members who would then identify a prime mover of the discomfiting change.

The "Folk Devil"

Cohen referred to the prime mover of change as a folk devil (Cohen, 1972). The folk devil could be a person (e.g., a divorced woman was viewed as a threat to the nuclear family), a group of people (e.g., Jews threatened to splinter the homogeneous and unifying religious beliefs and traditions of the community), or an event (e.g., women and teens pursuing casual sexual affairs, often referred to as Hooking Up, threaten the value of nuclear family groups and expose a communal lack of control over its women and children). In essence, the divorced woman, the Jew, and the act of Hooking Up come to be viewed as "the problem" (i.e., the identified folk devil) when, in fact, other factors are also contributing to the social change or ambiguity in the social system.

The underlying cause of moral panic is often the cultural strain and ambiguity caused by a social change which is already occurring. The identification of a folk devil often focuses the blame for that change on one entity rather than examining and addressing the underlying complexities of change (Hunt, 1997). For example, there is a moral panic that posits working women are the reason communities are unraveling and children are being left home unsupervised during the day. The identification of the working woman as the folk devil ignores:

• How economic forces compel many women in the lower-middle and middle classes to seek employment in order to help provide food and shelter for a traditional family unit;

• How the rise in divorce rates (and the actual structure of divorce law) places a disproportionate burden/risk on women who follow the traditional social contract (by dropping out of the workforce once they have children); and

• How affordable health insurance often forces women (who often find low paying jobs which offer low cost health insurance options) into the workforce because their partners have obtained a higher paying job that does not offer health insurance benefits or do not offer them at an affordable price; etc.

Additionally, many authors create confusion by labeling all forms of social anxiety as moral panics. In reality, a threat that is not predicted to result in a challenge to societal values and interests should fall under a different category of social anxiety (e.g. mass hysteria). For example, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 caused great social anxiety. However, the incident did not threaten a specific social value or social more so it is not referred to as an incident of moral panic.

3 Typologies of Conveyance

Once a deviance has been identified as a threat to the social fiber, the threat is communicated to others within the society; and often to adjoining societies. The manner in which the threat is conveyed to the public has been examined and formulated into three different typologies:

• Interest Group;

• Elite-Engineered; and

• Grassroots (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994).

Interest Group Panics

Interest Group Panics are typically constructed and spread by public mass media, which is often propelled by various interest groups. It is often the media that identifies the folk devil, decides which interest groups will be heard, and identifies the purported societal harm that will occur should the folk devil not be eradicated (Hunt, 1997). Often times a cause is taken up by the media and anecdotal information is presented as fact; and accepted by society as such. The newspapers, internet news, and televised news reports play an important role in generating and transmitting moral panics. Public awareness of deviance is spread as people read or listen to reports of, for example, gang activity, child killers, random public shootings, drug activity, and the perils of the mentally ill in an uncaring society. News reports often identify a potential folk devil and suggest ways the folk devil can be stopped. Activities can be framed in a positive or negative light (e.g., people demanding a reassertion of traditional societal boundaries may be referred to as guardians of what is proper and necessary or as bigots who do not understand the need for social change) (Davis, 1986).

Elite-Engineered Panics

Elite-Engineered Panics are started by social leaders who have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the panic and they are amplified by the media. In this typology, the media does not identify the deviant behavior or the folk devil. Instead, it accepts the definitions and interpretations of the social elite and works to sustain them while overlooking the vested interests of the elite (Veno & Eynde, 2007). The elite most often utilize fear as the primary mechanism with which to generate a moral panic in order to sustain their control over political power, hegemony, or wealth within the society. The problem with Interest Group Panics and Elite-Engineered Panics is that they are difficult to sustain in society absent actual trigger events. Although the public may panic initially, they will begin to look around, scoff at the lack of confirming data, and move on to another issue (Hunt, 1997; Veno & Eynde, 2007). Hence many issues will be founded as a Grassroots Panic yet must be picked up by Interest Groups or Elites before they are transmitted to the public at large via the media or, at best, the Panics generated by the Interest Groups and the Elites must be confirmed by grassroots agreement or the Panic will simply fade away (Hier, 2008).

Grassroots Panics

Grassroots Panics are founded on concerns existing in the society which are picked up and emphasized as issues by the media. It makes a strong argument that people are more readily swayed by anecdotal information directly related to their communities than by what they hear experts or interest groups say. In most cases, the public is concerned about events which appear to threaten their own communities (Hunt, 1997).

Mobilization

Once a topic for moral panic has been identified, a society will mobilize itself against the folk devil in favor of the status quo. A few examples will help to illustrate this concept. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the media suddenly focused on women's recalled memories of ritual child sexual abuse. Social workers mobilized against the folk devil of ritual sex abusers and created a scale to identify which of their patients had been victims of this type of abuse. They also began to hold therapy sessions tailored to assist victims with repressed memories of sexual abuse (Victor, 1998). The recalled memories were often used to convict the alleged offenders.

When the media focused on the number of children abducted (and also reported most abductions resulted in child sexual abuse) the legislature responded with the rapid enactment of the Protect Act of 2003 (more widely known as the Amber Alert). The Amber Alert also included legislation to reduce the sentencing discretion of judges before whom perpetrators of sex abuse and crimes against children appear (Zgoba, 2004). The Sex Offenders Act of 1997 enacted laws requiring Sex Offenders to make public the addresses of their private abodes so their neighbors could keep their eye on them (Soothill & Francis, 1998). In both cases, little effort was made to determine if sex offenses and abductions had indeed increased in the population and little effort was made to create a review of the effectiveness of these new programs.

Some American churches and political groups have joined together in mobilizing against gay marriage. The result is the ratification by various States of the Defense of Marriage Act which prohibits marriages unless they are between one man and one woman (Adams, 2003).

Coping

Typically, the ways of coping involve strengthening extant mechanisms of social control. Folk devils face public hostility, tougher laws, more stringent punishments, and increased police surveillance (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994). As the laws and punishments go into effect, the public regains a sense of safety and moral balance and believes the problem has resolved (despite whether there is an actual decrease in behavioral incidents).

Further Insights

Additions to the Theory of Moral Panic

When Cohen coined the phrase, Moral Panic, he envisioned a society reacting to media transmitted threats to the moral fabric of their society. As studies progressed on the theory, other authors imbued the term with a more narrow definition: one which added a new qualifier; that the fear of threat (or the threat itself) is always disproportionately exaggerated. To incorporate this qualifier into the definition of moral panic obfuscates one's ability to identify a moral panic without the benefit of hindsight. It is difficult to identify the point at which a threat is viewed as disproportionate rather than as realistic based on a logical, realistic appraisal (Hier, 2008).

Both academic and journalistic writers broadened the definition of moral panic to encompass many societal events which may have brought anxiety or fear to the public -- but failed to meet the standard of challenging the existing moral fabric of the society. During the 1980s AIDS, crowd violence at football games, etc. were identified as moral panics when, in fact, a threat to the morality was not an issue (Hunt, 1997). (AIDS could be argued as a moral panic in the reverse. When AIDS first appeared, conservative societies largely viewed it as a "gay disease" and claimed it was God's scourge on those who chose a homosexual lifestyle. Instead of a panic, it was seen as a solution to a panic.)

Further studies of moral panic began to articulate the notion of using the media to spin an incident to favor the vilified interest group (i.e., folk devil) and to promote radical social change purported to be unwanted by the general society (Veno & Eynde, 2007). In these cases, the identified folk devil:

• Uses coalition building to create a politically active group;

• Influences the media to spin the situation in their favor (i.e., running sympathetic stories about individuals in the vilified group. In this case the motorcycle club trotted out a "victim" who was paralyzed because of alleged police brutality and was struggling to care for his wife and child) and the public outcry against the group is reframed as a bigoted or uneducated view;

• The group lobbies independent politicians, civil liberties groups, and other marginalized groups with the goal of forging political alliances; and

• Uses legal challenges to decry the injustices being heaped upon the group in the form of stringent sentencing and stricter laws that target the group's activities. This tactical approach could be used to debunk myths which perpetuate bias and hate against marginalized groups or individuals. However, it appears to be used to try to force societies to accept people who choose to live aberrant lives (e.g., Hell's Angels, Goths, gangsters, Satanists, etc.) as safe and normal (Veno & Eynde, 2007).

It is not yet clear what these types of neutralization projects will have on societies and may be worth watching. If motorcycle clubs, youth gangs, and Satanists are successful in creating a society in which they are no longer vilified, will our societies be able to maintain safety or will safety be threatened? That question has not yet been scientifically answered.

Viewpoints

The Constructionist View

Some sociologists believe the notion of moral panic may be outdated as society has shifted to the degree that the boundary "separating morality from immorality has been blurred" (Hier, 2008, p. 174). Utilizing a Constructionist point of view, all moralizations involve a group of people acting on the conduct of others. The resultant laws can be viewed as necessary revisions or can be reframed as "punitive laws rooted in a politics of panic and resentment" (Adams, 2003, p. 260). Additionally, it is difficult to determine who is responsible to guard the moral fabric and safety of a society; this could be construed as the responsibilities of each individual or of a societal group. It could be deemed to be both; however, there are inherent tensions between individual rights and responsibilities and the rights and responsibilities of a diverse societal group. Also, one must examine the plurality of differing constructions to decide what is deemed to be moral or normal within a very dynamic society and, further, to determine harms created to groups identified as folk devils, in a quest to ascertain the stories were not created to oppress or marginalize those groups. Constructionists believe the term moral panic should evolve into a societal question that explores the endless debate regarding who "we" (as Americans) are and what "our" national culture truly is (Hier, 2008; McRobbie & Thornton, 1995).

Conclusion

The term, moral panic, was coined during a time when society was viewed as stable and morality/safety adhered to a more singular definition. The term has evolved along with American society and now appears to be somewhat lacking in meaning. American society blurs the boundaries between what is deemed right and wrong and questions the purposes of maintaining a traditional sense of safety and morality. Media is acknowledged as the unchallenged transmitter of moral panic topics and various interest groups have identified the means to use the media to spin the notion of morality to fit their own needs. Because of this, moral panic theory needs to be revisited in order to further refine it or deem it obsolete.

Terms & Concepts

Anecdotal: Information based on casual observations or shared stories rather than on information derived from analysis conducted using scientific methods.

Constructionist: One who believes truth is constructed by the point of view of the person narrating the story. As a result, most truths are actually stories meant to maintain the dominant group while oppressing others. For example, was America discovered by Columbus or stolen from the Native Americans who were colonized by the Europeans?

Deviant: Differing from the norm or accepted standards of a given society.

Event: A happening which has been narrated and noted to have cultural significance. Events are narrated and given meaning and tend to structure the social actions thought to be appropriate.

Hegemony: Social control attributed to the predominant influence of a country, religion, or other group over others.

Interest Groups: People sharing a similar point of view or need who group together to promote their perspective in tension with others. For example, child abuse issues will typically develop interest groups such as concerned parents, social workers, police, and the actual perpetrators. Each group holds a competing view on what society should do about identified child abusers.

Mass Media: Vehicles such as books, internet, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio that are used to disseminate information to a large group of people.

Prime Mover: A person, group, or circumstance which sets others in motion toward a new or different idea or situation.

Social Anxiety: The fear and anxiety of being judged and evaluated by other people.

Social Fiber: The various beliefs, values, and practices that, when interwoven, create the foundation, or fabric, of a society.

Social Mores: Norms or customs within a society which are derived from their practices rather than from their written rules. In other words, the unwritten rules of society.

Typology: A system in which people or things can be classified or represented as a specific type.

Bibliography

Adams, B. D. (2003). The Defense of Marriage Act and American exceptionalism: The "gay marriage" panic in the United States. Journal of the History of Sexuality , 12 , 259-276. Retrieved August 13, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=11751896&site=ehost-live

Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the mods and rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee.

Dagistanli, S., & Milivojevic, S. (2013). Appropriating the rights of women: Moral panics, victims and exclusionary agendas in domestic and cross-borders sex crimes. Women's Studies International Forum, 40230-242. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2013.09.001 Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=91274967&site=ehost-live

Davis, J. C. (1986). Fear, myth, and history: The ranters and the historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fletcher, S. (2013). Touching practice and physical education: deconstruction of a contemporary moral panic. Sport, Education & Society, 18, 694-709. doi:10.1080/13573322.2013.774272 Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=89571388&site=ehost-live

Goode, E., & Ben-Yehuda, N. (1994). Moral panics: The social construction of deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hier, S. P. (2008). Thinking beyond moral panic: Risk, responsibility, and the politics of moralization. Theoretical Criminology , 12, 173-190. Retrieved August 13, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=32775447&site=ehost-live

Hunt, A. (1997). 'Moral Panic' and moral language in the media. The British Journal of Sociology , 48 , 629-648. Retrieved August 10, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=3102&site=ehost-live

McRobbie, A., & Thornton, S. (1995). Rethinking "Moral Panic" for multimediated socal worlds. British Journal of Sociology , 46 , 559-574. Retrieved August 10, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9512222455&site=ehost-live

Soothill, K., & Francis, B. (1998). Poisoned chalice or just deserts? (The Sex Offenders Act 1997). The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry , 9 , 281-293. Retrieved August 15, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=6638370&site=ehost-live

Veno, A., & Eynde, V. D. (2007). Moral Panic neutralization project: A media-based intervention. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology , 17, 490-506. Retrieved August 10, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27296230&site=ehost-live

Victor, J. S. (1998). Moral Panics and the social construction of deviant behavior: A theory and application to the case of ritual child abuse. Sociological Perspectives , 41 , 541-563.

Zgoba, K. (2004). The Amber Alert: The appropriate solution to childhood abduction? Journal of Psychiatry and Law , 32, 71-88. Retrieved August 10, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=14028872&site=ehost-live

Moral Panic

On this Page

Subject Terms

Moral Panic

Moral Panic

Overview

Moral Panic: A Sociological Phenomenon

The "Folk Devil"

3 Typologies of Conveyance

Interest Group Panics

Elite-Engineered Panics

Grassroots Panics

Mobilization

Coping

Further Insights

Additions to the Theory of Moral Panic

Viewpoints

The Constructionist View

Conclusion

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading