Moral Panics

Who would have thought that scuffles between teenagers on the southeast coast of England on a cold April weekend in 1964 would have produced the notion of moral panic? Originating as a concept used to understand the reaction to the behavior of these teenagers, moral panic is one of the few sociological ideas that has entered common parlance. The reaction was considerable in relation to the degree of harm or damage. However, local and national media picked up on the events and alarm expressed by civic leaders and local business groups and made hay with headlines decrying the behavior and announcing the arrival of riot police to relieve what was described as a besieged town. More headlines further contributed to a spiral of reaction, and the issues were raised in the Houses of Parliament. The police and judiciary were urged to “crack down.” In the climate of a much-distorted view of events and behavior, overlong and custodial sentences were handed out for petty offenses such as vandalism. The participants in the moral panics include “folk devils” (the English teenagers), an influential and exaggerating media, local interest and pressure groups (civic and business leaders, religious leaders, and those who make “claims” as to expertise on the perceived problem), local and national politicians, the police, and judges. An important feature of moral panics is the “reaching beyond” the immediate problem with claims that there are society-wide implications; in the case of the teenagers in 1964, their deviant conduct was claimed to be symptomatic of general decline in morals. A moral panic is distinguished from general social anxieties and specific moral crusades when there is first a heightened concern over behavior of a group and the consequences this poses for wider society. There must be a division between “them,” the folk devils, and “us,” the responsible and law-abiding citizens. There must be consensus within society, or at least considerable segments of it, that the threat proposed is very serious. Additionally, the threat, damage, costs, and figures proposed by claims-makers are wildly exaggerated and do not coincide with an objective reality. Finally, moral panics are volatile. They typically explode, reach a pitch, and subside. Classic moral panics can also result in illiberal laws. As we will see, children and young people, and childhood, have regularly been the sites of moral panics.

Between Moral and Climate Crisis

This chapter identifies four main themes in the literature on media communication of climate change, which represent an interesting object of analysis for scholars who focus on moral panics' application. The combination of both the processual model and the attributional model to interpret the results of this literature review shows that during its emergence, climate change was polarised between “advocates” and “deniers” of both its existence and anthropogenic causes. This division has progressively shifted towards the consequences of climate change and need for action against it. Two distinct moral panics are identified. One is rooted in sceptical arguments and seems to work “in reverse” by emphasising the “uncertainty” around the phenomenon and its impacts. A second one is triggered by climate change supporters, who emphasise that climate change threatens life on the planet and that the current social practices need regulation and control.

Media Effects in Modern Neo-Information Society

The article proposes a systematization of the main media effects cultivated in the modern neo-information society, draws conclusions about their relationship and interdependence. Information overload, which produces information noise, becomes the cause of media effects. All sources of information noise are currently predominantly embedded in the field of the Internet, which, on the one hand, determines information liberalism, and on the other hand, as a result of the provision of illusory freedom, the overall effect of media manipulation increases. In turn, information noises give rise to such a process as information anomie. Pseudo-news precedents, differentiated into fake and post-truth, based on the motives of media controllers, are considered as manifestations of information noise. Media fraud is a radical form of post-truthization of the information agenda. The classical media effects are the spiral of silence, moral panics, information fatigue, narcotic dysfunction and compassion fatigue, which must be considered from an interdisciplinary perspective – both in the context of social sciences and natural sciences (in particular, medicine), since the influence of media on society and inspired media effects become more and more systemic, targeted, spreading to all spheres of social everyday life, unrecognized by consumers, as a result of which they often turn out to be beyond regulation and control.

The Sorcerer as Folk Devil in Contemporary Melanesia

This chapter ethnographically explores a Christian revival movement in Vanuatu led by children. Examining events surrounding the hanging of two adults accused of sorcery, the text challenges the assumption that moral panics are only created with the assistance of mass media. Instead, the chapter shows that they also arise in contexts where gossip, dreams and visions play a similar role in both defining social problems and moral panic.

Modern Folk Devils: Contemporary Constructions of Evil

The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world.Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled. Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania.

Who’s to Blame for Asylum ‘Moral Panics’? Asylum Seekers’ Perspectives on UK Policymaking, News Reporting, and Preferences of Identity Construction

This chapter critically reviews policies and news reporting in the United Kingdom claiming that they create, circulate and sustain a labelling of asylum seekers as folk devils. Drawing on interviews with asylum seekers on their preferred forms of representation, the author argues that, while the news media is mainly blamed for moral panics and representations of asylum seekers as folk devils, policymaking is equally complicit in the current demonization of asylum seekers in the UK.

Killer Portraits: An Urban Legend and Moral Panic of the 1990s

In the 1990s in Russia—as well as in other countries—there were rumors about the existence of Satanists; these sometimes lead to the so-called “Satanic Panics” described by researchers. The paper is devoted to the urban legend about Satanists that circulated in 1996–1997 in the Sverdlovsk and Moscow Regions of Russia. According to the rumors, some portraits of children taken by professional photographers included photographs of other people’s body parts, funerals, paraphernalia, and other foreign objects between the picture and its frame, which caused harm to the child depicted in the portrait. The paper is based on an analysis of the media (newspapers and a television program) and an interview taken in 2006 with a witness and participant of the events. Versions of the same urban legend published on the Internet in the 2000s–2010s are invoked for comparison. As a theoretical approach, the concept of moral panics is applied. The paper raises questions about the reasons for the explosive spread of the urban legend and the particular form of the moral panic. The paper shows that the idea of a portrait as a means of influence over the depicted person and of the possibility of damage through the image—which, in the 19th century, led to panics over the so-called “hell-depicting icons”—still exists in Russia and played its role in the moral panic of the 1990s.