Moral panic

Moral panics are generally fuelled by, although not caused by, media coverage of social issues and can sometimes lead to mob violence. The term was coined by Stanley Cohen[?] in 1972.

Recent moral panics in the UK have included the ongoing tabloid campaign against paedophiles, which led to the assault and persecution of a paediatrician by an angry mob in August 2000, and that surrounding the murder of James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993.

Examples of moral panics, or real or imagined phenomena that spurred moral panic:

• The Columbine massacre led to many schools over-reacting against imagined deviance among their pupils
• Marijuana (drug) - see Reefer Madness (movie promoting an urban legend)
• Cocaine (drug) - esp. urban legend of the "Negro Coke Fiend[?]"
• Mods and Rockers caused moral outrage in Britain in the 1960s
• Prohibition - a period in the United States when alcoholic beverages were prohibited.
• Rock 'n' Roll music
• Rap music
• Satanic ritual abuse
• Video nasties - films depicting violent acts supposedly released on VHS in Britain in the 1980s
• Videogames and violence
• McCarthyism
• War on drugs
• War on Terrorism
• Witch hunts
• White slavery

See also:

• Folk devil[?]
• Mass hysteria[?]

References:

• Cohen, Stanley. Folk devils and moral panics. London: Mac Gibbon and Kee, 1972.

External links

• 'Moral Panic' and moral language in the media (http://www.lse.ac.uk/serials/Bjs/mora497.htm)
• Another paper on moral panics (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/lcs9603.html)
• Course notes on moral panics (http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/online/sociol318/week4.html)