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The term ‘moral panic’ can be defined as a ‘disproportional and hostile social reaction to a condition, person or group defined as a threat to societal values’. It is a term commonly associated with the media where stereotyping is represented and this leads to the demand for better social control and creating a reaction from the public eye, hence the term ‘panic’ (McLaughlin & Muncie, 2001). Hall et al. (1978) also analysed the idea of a ‘moral panic’ and suggested that when the reaction to a person or group is ‘out of proportion’ to the actual ‘threat’ and professionals in the area such as police and politicians also have a similar reaction and begin to voice solutions, rates of crime etc., in addition to the media representation of the so called ‘threat’ which becomes sensationalised and exaggerated, this is when it is appropriate to name the situation a moral panic. Cohen (1972) first looked at moral panics and stated that there are certain periods where society experiences moral panics and these could last for a lifetime or could be short-lived and forgotten. Cohen (1972) was one of the first to look at the term moral panic around Mods and Rockers in Britain and focused on the media coverage on these groups in the 1960s. The descriptions and the definitions the media used was the focus as it was the main outlet for society’s information. Cohen (1972) found that the media exaggerated statistics including the number of youths involved, the extent of the violence and the damage caused. Further distortion of events increased due to the sensational headlines and use of dramatic reporting. Cohen also found that the media used the word ‘mod’ to symbolise deviance and this symbolisation led to other events that may not have had anything to do with the current situation to be linked. Cohen continued on to describe the findings as having three common characteristics: diffusion, escalation and innovation. Diffusion is where situations in other places become associated with the original situation. Escalation is where there are demands for extreme measures to be carried out in order to minimise and exterminate the threat and innovation refers to the ‘increased powers’ for the police and courts to sort out the threat. Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) also identified five key features that could describe moral panics: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility. In other words, a situation or event occurs and sparks panic among society which leads to the person or particular social group involved being labelled as folk devils then this goes on to spur a reaction which is ‘broad and unified’ within society. This leads to the exaggeration of the situation and the potential threat it poses which is further multiplied by the media’s reporting which could spark the panic but could also eliminate it too. When it comes to street violence, youths are widely associated with this type of deviant behaviour. A recent ‘moral panic’ which was associated with youths and street violence was actually an item of clothing: the hoodie. During the 1990s, the term became associated with the sudden appearance of a subculture or group of people named ‘chavs’, young working class youths, in the UK. This led to the use of the term ‘hoodie culture’ used both by the media and public (Marsh & Meville, 2011). It is particularly in the UK that hoodies have been reacted to in such a negative way, so much so that the item of clothing has been banned in public places such as the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent. This banning of hoodies and other items of clothing which specifically could hide the face brought the ‘hoodie culture’ into the public’s awareness and this led to the raised concern of shoppers being weary of youths in such clothing (Marsh & Meville, 2011). The ban sparked public interest and debate and this led to the ‘meaning’ of hoodie being studied by journalists and individuals within education. McLean (2005) stated that hoodies stroked ‘fear into the heart of most people’ and Harrington (cited in McLean, 2005) on the subject of the Bluewater ban said that the ban ‘demonstrates a growing demonization’ on young people and there is an overreaction to any behaviour by these young people. This suggests that the concern over street violence involving youth can be seen as a moral panic because banning an item of clothing just because it is associated with such deviance due to the media representation of youths and what they happen to be wearing has been exaggerated which has meant that extreme measures would have to be taken to keep the public happy and enforce social control. The moral panic about hoodies according to Marsh and Meville (2011) was part of a wider concern about the anti-social behaviour of youths and, as with other panics, the reaction to this has been criticized by those within education and those working in the criminal justice system as exaggerated and unreasonable. More than 65% of people consider youth crime is rising and experts agree there can be a connection between antisocial behaviour and serious youth crime. However, statistically, youth offending is actually falling. The number of 10-to-17-year-olds convicted or cautioned for a crime fell from 143,600 to 105,700 between 1992 and 2002 which was a drop of almost 26% (Barkham, 2005). Despite the dramatic drop in recorded crime overall, concerns about the behaviour of young people remains high, suggesting that society does not consider factual statistics when worrying about crime rates. In other words, stories of youth crime and general crime overall are sensationalised by the media and their representations of youth and descriptions used such as ‘out of control teenage gangs’. Concerns over youth crime and street violence have been consistent throughout the years as shown by Cohen (1972) for his work on Mods and Rockers. The behaviour of young people since then has caused anger about moral decline and lack of social control. Crimes statistics show black youths, particularly young black males, commit a disproportionate amount of crime, however the media is known to sensationalise news stories and make vast exaggerations. In the early 70’s, an example of street violence that was first recorded as a ‘moral panic’ was mugging. Hall et al’s (1978) Policing the Crisis study demonstrates how the media shapes public views regarding a particular group in society. The 1970s moral panic surrounding muggings was blamed predominantly on young black men. For example, Arthur Hills was stabbed to death near Waterloo Station in London and this was one of the first crimes to be labelled as a mugging in the media. The stories in newspapers highly reported this type of crime as new and frightening. Professionals in the area such as police and judges were adamant that this was a huge threat to society. This even led to people thinking that the streets of Britain will become like those of New York or Chicago which had very high rates of street violence at the time (Hall, 1978). Hall criticised this form of reporting, stating that the panic and reaction towards these events were not understandable because in the past ‘footpads and garrotters’ had also committed violent crimes on the streets which were not labelled as muggings and therefore the idea of ‘mugging’ and ‘violent street crime’ was not new at all. Also the Home Secretary reported that ‘mugging’ was on a 129 per cent rise however Hall stated that there was no way to measure this because there was not an exact definition for this crime nor did a law apply to it. From Hall’s study on the statistics there was no evidence that violent crime was rising as fast in the time leading up to the panic. Using the nearest legal category to mugging which was ‘assault with intent to rob’, the official statistics showed a yearly rise of an average of 33.4 per cent between 1955 and 1965, but only a 14 per cent average annual increase from 1965 to 1972. This type of crime was growing more slowly as the time the panic took place then it had done so in previous decades. Another example of a moral panic which involves street violence is the emergence of girl gangs and stories about how they ‘roam the streets randomly attacking innocent victims’. This has been a recurring story in newspaper headlines and magazines in recent years. Whilst there may be some support for these claims, the stories are likely to be a distortion of the facts; this is shown by statistics on offending patterns. A recent self-report survey found that assaults committed by females are more likely to involve a victim they know already and the victim is more predominately male rather than female (Budd et al., 2005). There is little known knowledge about the actual nature and seriousness of girls’ violent offending. It may be that assault carried out by a female is more likely to be as a result of anger or an act of self-defence, or against a police officer when confronted perhaps during a drunken night out, or parents, family members, or members of the public are more likely to bring violent acts committed by females to the attention of the police. Outside the UK, there are other examples of moral panic and amplification by the media, for example slashing cases in Singapore. This involves Singaporean youth gang members who have recently have been reported in the media sparking fear among those living in Singapore (Palatino, 2010). The high documentation of these criminal acts is slightly exaggerated further by the mass media. These reports spark the public’s fear of being attack by youth gangs especially when high-profile cases such as the murder of Darren Ng at Downtown East was reported to occur in the evening between 5.30pm and 5.57pm which is a time period where school children would be on their way home. This further fuelled the anxiety felt by parents who were said to be already paranoid of their children making their own way to school. Moreover, there appeared to be very easy access to graphic and explicit pictures of the victim that were allowed to be released across both printed and online news outlets which sparked even more of a widespread panic of youth gang members being more brave to commit the crime again anytime during the day. Like in the UK, this ‘panic’ is slightly disproportional as updated statistics proves that crime rates in Singapore have been steadily decreasing. . The series of attacks triggered the search for explanations on the idea of the rising of gang violence. Society aimed to explain the nature of fights taking place and whether they were random or due to revenge and the focus was also on the structure of gangs. Following the Downtown East incident, many reports talked about youth gangs- how an action as small as staring can lead to violent fights, reports also talked about why youths joined these gangs. News reports of the extreme cases reminded readers about the significant attack at Downtown East that created further concerns over gang-related violence in Singapore. News reports of being arrest were frequent to remind the society of the strict laws and the consequences of such violent acts. Although there were no specific details mentioned, the report came with comments by Minister of Home Affairs, K. Shanmugam, to assure the public tough acts were taken to tackle youth gangs. Comments by public figures like Minister of MCYS also bring public attention to at-risk youths on the importance of increase community initiatives to prevent them from gang associations. The situation of the Singapore youth slashing highly supported Goode and Ben Yehuda’s (1994) features of moral panics. Black youth crime and the image of black youths in the media have generated considerable publicity in recent years. The recent fatal knife and gun crimes in London involving black youths were highlighted by the media which in turn produced a moral panic surrounding the issue. In recent years there has been quite a lot of media coverage involving black youths and crime. Particularly in 2006 and 2007 there was a spate of fatal stabbings and shootings amongst black youth. For example, the deaths of Kodjo Yenga and Adam Regis in March 2007. These two murders were of huge interest to the media as it was during a period where black youth crime in London was highlighted. Kodjo Yenga was stabbed in the heart just five days after being interviewed on television about knife crime and its prevalence. Just days after this murder, Adam Regis was stabbed to death on the streets of East London on his way home after meeting with friends. These are only two examples of black youth crime that made its way into the media in 2007. There had in fact been over twenty murders involving black youths in London alone in 2007 (Okoronkwo, 2008) It would be useful to gain an understanding of why black youth crime is such a huge issue and why it is highlighted so much in the media. News agendas and news values ultimately decide what is to be broadcasted and in what particular order. There are twelve news structures and news values that shape crime news (Jewkes, 2004). Under the news value threshold it is stated that in order for something to be deemed newsworthy it has to meet a certain level of significance. The media create moral panics according to their criteria of news values (Okorokwo, 2008). ‘Once a story has reached the required threshold it may have to meet further thresholds to stay on the agenda, the story is often kept alive due to the creation of new thresholds, some stories are used as fillers during quiet news periods and tend to be reported in waves, suggesting a widespread social problem rapidly approaching crisis point,’ (Jewkes, 2004, p.41). The media has been accused of sensationalising events surrounding violent black youth crime, attaching a level of drama making it newsworthy. This reporting of crime and deviance plays a vital role in shaping the public’s view of crime and its suspects. Eighty six percent of white homicide victims are killed by other whites, and most homicide victims know each other. In conclusion, it seems that concern over street violence can be seen as a moral panic because overall crime statistics show that crime is actually decreasing rather than decreasing. However, in order to earn good money and sell more, the media seem to exaggerate and sensationalise every lone even to make it seem like it happens every day even if it’s a rare occurrence. A good example to support this claim was the Lee Rigby murder. One lone horrible act of violence had the public up in a panic over fears they would be hacked in the street or murdered in a similar way even though the perpetrators were caught. This goes to show how much power the media really has in terms of social control.

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A Sociological Understanding of Moral Panic

Key Concepts
Major Sociologists
News & Issues
Research, Samples, and Statistics
Recommended Reading
Archaeology

A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values , safety, and interests of a community or society at large. Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by the news media, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or policies that target the source of the panic. In this way, moral panic can foster increased social control .

Moral panics are often centered around people who are marginalized in society due to their race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, or religion. As such, a moral panic often draws on known stereotypes and reinforces them. It can also exacerbate the real and perceived differences and divisions between groups of people. Moral panic is well known in the sociology of deviance and crime and is related to the labeling theory of deviance .

Stanley Cohen's Theory of Moral Panics

The phrase "moral panic" and the development of the sociological concept is credited to the late South African sociologist Stanley Cohen (1942–2013). Cohen introduced the social theory of moral panic in his 1972 book titled "Folk Devils and Moral Panics." In the book, Cohen describes how the British public reacted to the rivalry between the "mod" and "rocker" youth subcultures of the 1960s and '70s. Through his study of these youth and the media and public reaction to them, Cohen developed a theory of moral panic that outlines five stages of the process.

The Five Stages and Key Players of Moral Panics

First, something or someone is perceived and defined as a threat to social norms and the interests of the community or society at large. Second, the news media and community members depict the threat in simplistic, symbolic ways that quickly become recognizable to the greater public. Third, widespread public concern is aroused by the way news media portrays the symbolic representation of the threat. Fourth, the authorities and policymakers respond to the threat, be it real or perceived, with new laws or policies. In the final stage, the moral panic and the subsequent actions of those in power lead to social change in the community.

Cohen suggested that there are five key sets of actors involved in the process of moral panic. They are the threat that incites the moral panic, which Cohen referred to as "folk devils," and the enforcers of rules or laws, like institutional authority figures, police, or armed forces. The news media plays its role by breaking the news about the threat and continuing to report on it, thereby setting the agenda for how it is discussed and attaching visual symbolic images to it. Enter politicians, who respond to the threat and sometimes fan the flames of the panic, and the public, which develops a focused concern about the threat and demands action in response to it.

The Beneficiaries of Social Outrage

Many sociologists have observed that those in power ultimately benefit from moral panics, since they lead to increased control of the population and the reinforcement of the authority of those in charge . Others have commented that moral panics offer a mutually beneficial relationship between news media and the state. For the media, reporting on threats that become moral panics increases viewership and makes money for news organizations. For the state, the creation of a moral panic can give it cause to enact legislation and laws that would seem illegitimate without the perceived threat at the center of the moral panic.

Examples of Moral Panics

There have been many moral panics throughout history, some quite notable. The Salem witch trials, which took place throughout colonial Massachusetts in 1692, are an oft-mentioned example of this phenomenon. Women who were social outcasts faced accusations of witchcraft after local girls were afflicted with unexplained fits. Following the initial arrests, accusations spread to other women in the community who expressed doubt about the claims or who responded to them in ways deemed improper or inappropriate. This particular moral panic served to reinforce and strengthen the social authority of local religious leaders, since witchcraft was perceived to be a threat to Christian values, laws, and order.

More recently, some sociologists have framed the " War on Drugs " of the 1980s and '90s as an outcome of moral panic. News media attention to drug use, particularly use of crack cocaine among the urban Black underclass, focused public attention on drug use and its relationship to delinquency and crime. The public concern generated through news reporting on this topic, including a feature in which then-First Lady Nancy Reagan participated in a drug raid, shored up voter support for drug laws that penalized the poor and working classes while ignoring drug use among the middle and upper classes. Many sociologists attribute the policies, laws, and sentencing guidelines connected to the "War on Drugs" with increased policing of poor urban neighborhoods and incarceration rates of residents of those communities.

Additional moral panics include public attention to "welfare queens," the notion that poor Black women are abusing the social services system while enjoying lives of luxury. In reality, welfare fraud is not very common , and no one racial group is more likely to commit it. There is also moral panic around a so-called "gay agenda" that threatens the American way of life when members of the LGBTQ community simply want equal rights. Lastly, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islamophobia, surveillance laws, and racial and religious profiling grew from the fear that all Muslims, Arabs, or brown people overall are dangerous because the terrorists who targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had that background. In fact, many acts of domestic terrorism have been committed by non-Muslims.

Updated by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

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Crime Waves and Moral Panics

From train robberies to organized retail theft to murder, are we really gripped by a crime wave?

Police officers gather as the body of NYPD officer Wilbert Mora is transferred in an ambulance from NYU Langone Hospital to a Medical Examiner's office at the same location on January 25, 2022 in New York City.

Organized retail theft, train robberies, and murders! According to news headlines, a crime wave is sweeping the US. Yet as JSTOR Daily has reported before, sometimes crime waves are little more than moral panics. Other times, media coverage does reflect actual increases in crime. To understand the difference, each allegation needs to be carefully dissected and analyzed.

The first documented crime wave moral panic was in 1744 London . In many ways, that panic resembled the panic about crime waves today. Historian Richard Ward identified phases of the 1744 panic and a pattern of public reaction that has become formulaic: Initial media attention garners further media attention, inspiring broad concern in the public, which leads to more crime getting reported to the police, which leads to a further perception of increased crime, and a response of increased punishment and control.

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This phenomenon often occurs after reform measures are implemented, no matter how moderate. In Victorian Britain , for example, reformers sought to diminish the use of public execution and floggings. Temporarily, they succeeded. Though the actual crime rate didn’t budge afterwards, constant coverage from the incipient mass media industry led people to believe it had increased, and that the reduction in executions and floggings were to blame. In response, new laws restored the broad use of corporal punishment.

Sociologist Vincent F. Sacco writes that the media misshape our conceptions of crime when coverage is divorced from actual shifts in the crime rate. According to Sacco, “News reports also distort the relationship between crime and legal control. In the news, the police appear to be more effective in apprehending offenders than police data would suggest that they are.” Sacco frames this as a natural extension of news rooms’ reliance on trusted sources, frequently interpreted to mean the police. This objective framing of crime and punishment belies far more subjective elements of law and punishment.

Crime waves and their ensuing mythologies are often used to justify stiffer and stiffer punishments. Today, special interest groups such as Buy Safe America Coalition are seeking amendments to the criminal code to allow for punitive punishments for theft.

What Deters Crime?

Even the federal government has illuminated the error of focusing on the severity of punishment. A 2016 report from the US Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice offers five facts about crime deterrence. They’re worth addressing in their entirety, as they run counter to most political campaign policy positions on crime:

The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment. Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime. Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished. … Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes. More severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals convicted of crimes, and prisons may exacerbate recidivism. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals. …

The most effective crime deterrent is the certainty by which someone will be caught and convicted. Increasing the abstract potential length of imprisonment has not been shown to deter crime. And yet, in the face of crime waves both real and imagined, the policy response is often to increase sentence lengths.

Joe Biden talks with reporters after P.C. on crime bill, 1994

The National Institute of Justice’s report draws heavily from Daniel Nagin’s article “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century” in Crime and Justice . Merely synthesized in the federal report, Nagin’s full piece plumbs the depths of crime control policy and offers glaring insight into approaches that are both commonplace and misguided.

An incarceration-based sanction policy that reduces crime solely by incapacitation will necessarily increase the rate of imprisonment. In contrast, if the crime control policy also prevents crime by deterrence, it may be possible to reduce both imprisonment and crime; successful prevention by any mechanism, whether by deterrence or otherwise, has the virtue of averting not only crime but also the punishment of perpetrators.

Nagin concludes that, “…it is clear that lengthy prison sentences cannot be justified on a deterrence-based, crime prevention basis.” For crime prevention, he asserts that police presence can increase the perception that there is a certainty of apprehension.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice , 66.75% of all serious crime went unsolved in 2018. For the 33.25% who were caught, they often faced longer sentences than they would have in other wealthy democratic nations. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, much higher than even dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.

Although an increase in our clearance rate—the rate by which serious crimes are solved—would be a more effective crime deterrent, that proves elusive. Most importantly, it is beyond the direct control of lawmakers, who in turn focus narrowly on what is within their purview: sentence length. Political campaigns are built around anxieties over crime and safety, with promises of increasingly harsh sentences commonplace. Politicians, for one, seem undeterred by data that contradict their claims that longer sentences increase public safety.

Selling a $20 bag of drugs has long been a crime that warranted imprisonment. But in the face of rising outrage over our overdose crisis, this crime has been increasingly rebranded as homicide since 2014. Though the act itself hasn’t shifted—selling small amounts of drugs—lawmakers were able to stiffen punishments by considering the outcome, however unintended. Drug delivery resulting in death laws , like the ones used to prosecute the men who sold Michael K. Williams the dose off of which he overdosed, are being adopted by more states nationwide.

While data are difficult to assess because they are disaggregated and by county, out of the more than 100,000 fatal overdose deaths annually, only a tiny fraction are charged as homicides, likely less than 1%. Despite the abhorrent death count, it remains true that most people who use drugs do not die, meaning there can be little certainty that an overdose would even occur, much less be prosecuted. Longer and longer sentences are being advised for people who sell drugs if a death occurs, although sentence length is not a substantive crime deterrent. Meanwhile, drug overdose rates reach historic highs. The impulse to reach for punitive solutions, rather than preventive, appears deeply engrained.

Many state legislatures have introduced new laws to create harsher penalties for shoplifting, often at the behest of lobbyists representing retailers. Though some proposals do address the certainty of conviction that the National Institute of Justice says is the most effective crime deterrent, mostly they’re about increasing the potential sentence length. This is done by aggregating the value of the person’s thefts across time, which is able to trigger a felony. Such laws have been enacted or proposed from Florida to California .

A gate is used to lock items at a pharmacy and convenience store on October 26, 2021 in New York City

In California, the trade groups lobbying for the law cited theft dollar value estimates so inflated it prompted a thorough debunking by the LA Times . Shrink, industry jargon for inventory loss whether by paperwork errors, shoplifting, fraud, or employee theft, increased 0.2% in from 2015 to 2020 according to the National Retail Federation. Though data are notoriously splintered, best estimates put the actual profit losses stemming from organized retail theft at around 0.07%. Disproportionality is a hallmark of a moral panic.

In October, Walgreens closed five stores in San Francisco, citing retail theft. Three months later, Walgreens and CVS announced nationwide closures of some of their stories but cited the Omicron variant and staffing shortages. The moral panic of the moment makes a convenient scapegoat, though reality is often far more complex.

Amanda Mull’s feature “The Great Shoplifting Freak-Out” in The Atlantic extricates reality from panic, by focusing on how crime stories conflate smash-and-grabs—which are felonies—with misdemeanor theft. What constitutes “organized” retail theft is never clearly defined by the police or public relations officers who refer to it.

Though the special interest groups use egregious examples of truly organized retail theft or violent burglaries to support the creation and enforcement of their laws, in application it would appear they are used for mundane shoplifting. As Mull states, brick-and-mortar retailers who long operated on a narrow margin have felt the crunch from online shopping. It’s unclear—because it’s kept an industry secret—to what degree or if shoplifting has actually increased, but the impact of it is being felt on a tighter and tighter budget.

Train robberies may sound like something out of the Wild Wild West, but according to media coverage, they’re frequently occurring in present-day Los Angeles, California. Union Pacific, which owns operates its own police force, has released statements about increased theft along the tracks.

A Union Pacific freight train passes along a section of tracks littered with debris from packages stolen from cargo containers stacked on rail cars on January 19, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

Upon going to the trainyard to investigate the claims, an LA Times reporter spoke with a man who seemed to be engaged in simple theft. Yet Union Pacific’s Director of Public Affairs, Adrian Guerrero, said that, “about 90 cargo containers a day are compromised, sometimes by an organized group that has halted trains and recruited people living on the street to ransack the containers.” Guerrero’s claims range from unsubstantiated to unlikely.

A different LA Times article hints at how the situation became so dire. “Under federal law, Union Pacific and other railroad companies can employ their own police force accredited by the state to protect tracks. Former employees and police say budgetary issues have slashed the ranks of the company’s force, leaving as few as half a dozen in the region.” Public outcry about purported increases in thefts often leads to an increased police presence, thereby shifting the cost burden of whose job it is to provide security from the corporation to the city. George Gascón, the progressive district attorney in Los Angeles County, is often blamed by law enforcement officers and corporate spokespeople for the city’s crime.

Violent Crime Conflation

The conflation of property crime with violent crime—theft with robbery—is a facet of crime wave stories. In Portland, a local media outlet ran the headline, “Survey: Over 60% of Portland small businesses grapple with break-ins.” But in the body of the article, the 60% of respondents had experienced either a break-in or vandalism. Burglary is a felony sometimes subjected to mandatory minimum prison sentences in the state, graffiti is not. They are two very distinct crimes, but their conflation gives the appearance of the proliferation of violent crime.

While exact verbiage varies by state, robbery implies the taking of property by force. Theft is strictly property crime, the taking of a thing, while robbery implies a human victim. According to available data, property crime is flat or down in most US cities, including San Francisco despite the moral panic. (Note: 2020 was a statistical anomaly, so while property crime may seem elevated year-over-year, numbers remain below their 2019 norms.)

During crime’s lowest points over the past decade, there was a mismatch of public perception. With crime stories making up the lion’s share of media coverage, the American people were continuously convinced that crime was increasing . For years, this was false. Crime had been at historic lows and in decline.

Now, homicides have increased steeply, and not just in the United States . In the US in 2020, homicides rose nearly 30% over the previous year. While that increase wasn’t sustained through 2021, homicides remain elevated over recent years. They are still well below the peaks of the early 90s.

The risk of being murdered is not shared equally across the population. This has long been a recognized problem, with Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo addressing the matter in their piece “ Racial Segregation and Black Urban Homicide .” Then, as now, Black Americans were vastly more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts.

Police tape blocks a street where a person was recently shot in a drug related event in Kensington on July 19, 2021 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Yet crime stories rarely convey circumstances or relationships, often giving the impression that violent crime is random. One in 1000 Black Portlanders were murdered in the year from June 2020 to June 2021. Black people represent 5.8% of the city’s population, but 41% of its homicide victims. While the disparity is less stark in other major cities, it persists nationwide.

While crime stories are often one-dimensional, recited in rote terms of victim and perpetrators, research asserts that the bright-line distinction between each category belies a broader complexity. Victims and perpetrators are often of the same demographic, and a mix of chance and circumstance dictate on which side of the dichotomy they fall on a given day.

Suicides and drug overdoses dwarf homicides annually, and both receive less media attention. There is something inherent to crime and its coverage in the media that spawns fear in a way that other more statistically common injuries do not.

If that fear can translate into effective public policy decisions is to be determined. Historically , it has translated into increased sentence lengths but not higher case clearances. While some elements of the US being under a crime wave may be factual, others are reliant on exaggerations, redefinitions, or outright inventions. Extricating truth from media panic is a challenge of the times, and media literacy in the US is infamously low .

Crime Wave or Moral Panic?

The politicization of crime is nothing new to the US. It was most apparent during the tough-on-crime era of the late 1980s and early 1990s. While the movement enjoyed broad bipartisan support, there was concerted (conservative) opposition. As captured in a 1992 issue of Prison Legal News , 350 public figures including corrections officials across 20 states pleaded for humanity. “In this election year, we urge all candidates to refrain from politicizing crime and punishment policy. Appeals to base human instincts and demagoguery will ultimately make the problem worse.” Shortly after that, a spate of even tougher crime bills passed. Apparently, their pleas had fallen on deaf ears. The perception and reality of crime during the era shaped public policy.

“Moral panics require both cultural imagery that can be built into a sense of threat and politicians able to attract voters by using that threat,” write Nancy Cauthen and James Jasper in Sociological Forum . “Cultural constructions such as moral panics are also political strategy.” The difficulty in parsing reality from sensational coverage, “fake news,” and inflammatory campaign statements is casting ever more implications on US democracy. Political toxicity has reached new heights. Public policy maneuvers based on falsehoods will be inherently ineffective.

The conjuring of a crime wave and the ability to blame it—whether real or imagined—on reforms dates back two centuries. Property crime is down nationwide . While egregious anecdotes are held up as evidence, the data point elsewhere. Homicides are up, which has both public safety and racial justice implications. Crime wave moral panics are often just that, moral panics. Even if founded in fact, their coverage often flattens the complexity that is our society.

Editor’s note: This topic was inspired by a powerful 1981 essay on crime waves and violence written by Ernest Harrell. JSTOR Daily encourages you to read it in full. The Scroll, where it was published, was produced by incarcerated people at Bridgeport Community Correctional Center in Connecticut. It is a part of Reveal Digital’s American Prison Newspapers Collection.

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The Anatomy of a Moral Panic

The First Moral Panic, London 1744

Moral Panic toolkit

Moral Panic: Who Benefits from Public Fear?

Meme Tracking and the Dynamics of a News Cycle

Moral panics : the social construction of deviance / Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Revisiting moral panics / edited by Viviene E. Cree, Gary Clapton and Mark Smith

We believe the children : a moral panic in the 1980s / Richard Beck

Youth, popular culture and moral panics : penny gaffs to gangsta-rap, 1830-1996 / John Springhall

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What is a Moral Panic?

What are moral panics.

Moral panics are instances of mass fear based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society's values and interests.

Such panics are fostered by mass media and exploited by self-appointed moralists and politicians.

First coined by Jock Young (1971) and, later, Stanley Cohen (1972) when he studied the public reaction to youths called “mods and rockers” in Brighton, England during the 1960's.

MORAL PANIC EXAMPLES

Salem Witch Trials, 1692-93

McCarthyism, 1950s

Satanic Panic, 1980s-90s

QAnon, 2017-present

Moral panics arise when distorted mass media campaigns are used to create fear, reinforce stereotypes and exacerbate preexisting divisions in the world, often based on race, ethnicity and social class.

Many social problems have been the basis of distorted mass media campaigns. Do you remember any of these moral panics?

Youth gangs
School violence
Widespread child abuse

ANATOMY OF A MORAL PANIC

Event sparks social anxiety
Moral panic emerges and disappears suddenly (often when another moral panic takes its place)

Disproportionality

Threat is exaggerated
Examples of exaggerations: number of individuals involved, level and extent of violence, amount of damage caused
Fear of this subculture becomes the dominant narrative in media and social discussion
Subculture is seen as ‘folk devils’ who are looked upon with hostility

-Goode and Ben Yehuda, 1994

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moral panic

Quick reference.

A mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behaviour or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society's values and interests. Moral panics are generally fuelled by media coverage of social issues. The phenomenon was first described in 1972 in relation to the ‘Mods & Rockers’ groups of the 1960s. Since then moral panics have occurred in relation to ‘ritual satanic abuse’, that was perceived to be widespread in the 1980s, and paedophilia, which led to vigilante action against innocent people.

From: moral panic in A Dictionary of Law Enforcement »

What Are Moral Panics?

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A moral panic is essentially an irrational fear surrounding a perceived threat to an existing moral order. Moral panics tend to be located within notions of deviance as moral panics tend to revolve around events which are seen as deviant to the existing moral order. This article looks at the origins of moral panics, the different types of moral panics, and finally some examples of moral panics which have happened over the course of history.

The Origins of Moral Panics

Much of academia tends to attribute the concept of the moral panic to either Jock Young or Stan Cohen. However, in an article by Sutton (2013), the term ‘moral panic’ is traced back to at least 1830 in The Quarterly Christian Spectator Volume 2 (Maltby, 1830: 350). Here it is used as a term which Sutton argues is in the meaning of an abandonment of morality. Sutton then follows up on this with an entry from the Journal of Health in 1832 written by an ‘Association of Physicians’ called ‘Safeguards Against Cholera’. It shows the term ‘moral panic’ being used in its more familiar current day meaning and was described in a quote taken from the French physician Magendie:

“Magendie, a French physician of note, on his visit to Sunderland, where the Cholera was, by the last accounts, still raging, praises the English government for not surrounding the town with a cordon of troops, which as “a physical preventive would have been ineffectual, and would have produced a moral panic far more fatal than the disease now is”” ( p. 180 ).

This implies that at the time there may have been a military response to Cholera which had invoked a moral panic elsewhere; some kind of moral opposition to military personnel being used in dealing with cholera. The English government may then have avoided this avenue. It certainly draws comparisons with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Modern Moral Panics

As mentioned, the moral panics that academia are more familiar with are those of Stan Cohen. Stan Cohen formulated his ideas through media reports of clashes between mods and rockers. Mods and rockers were two subcultures that were known for having rival clashes during the 1960’s. Mod culture was symbolised by ska, modern jazz, wearing suits, and riding scooters. Rockers by opposition were into the rock and roll music of the time, riding motorcycles, and sported leather jackets.

Cohen (1972) argued that societies are vulnerable to sporadic events of moral panic. He describes the moral panic as:

A condition, episode, person or group 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 editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself.

He observed that often these moral panics revolved around youth cultures which in this case is the mods and rockers. However, he also gives examples of the Teddy Boys, Hells Angels, skinheads, and hippies.

Amplification Spiral

One of the central elements of a moral panic is its amplification in the media. As the term ‘amplification spiral’ suggests, the issue is amplified, made louder, by the media to the point at which it begins to spiral through society. Cohen addressed the way in which media do actually amplify a given problem and referred to ‘deviancy amplification’ noting how some panics tend to ‘spiral’. He never actually used the term ‘amplification spiral’ but that is now how we refer to the phenomena.

Thompson (2013: 395) uses the example of the ‘mosque at ground zero’ to demonstrate the amplification spiral. Ground zero refers to the area where the World Trade Centre once stood in lower Manhattan, New York before the events of 9/11. A localised issue surrounding the building of a Muslim community centre near to the site was picked up and turned into a campaign by right-wing conservative bloggers. Despite the fact that the proposed site for the centre was already in use as a Muslim site of worship, the story became amplified in the media who drew upon pre-existing traumas from the events of 9/11 ultimately spreading anti-muslim fears. This, in turn, manifested in other states beyond New York.

Types of Moral Panic

Beyond Stan Cohen, academics have sought to expand upon Cohens works. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Goode & Ben-Yehuda (2009). In their book ‘Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance’, they outline what they see as three different models of moral panic: grassroots model, interest group theory, and elite-engineered model.

Grassroots Model: in this model, moral panic originates from the general public who perceive some kind of issue emerging from society that represents a threat to their values. The media and politicians, rather than creating the panic, become aware of the existing panic from the general public and begin to amplify it. This, of course, returns us to Cohen’s amplification spiral.

Elite-Engineered Model: this model argues that the origins of a moral panic are created or orchestrated by the ruling elite. The intent is, of course, to induce panic or even fear of a perceived threat to the moral order. This issue is amplified in the media so as to be disproportionate to the actual reality of the problem. It is used as a way of distracting the public from more serious issues present which, to provide solutions for, would threaten the power of the ruling elite. An example of this is how the UK Conservative party stirred up hatred of benefit claimants after the financial crash of 2008 to manufacture support for austerity rather than experience any significant losses themselves.

Interest Group Theory: somewhere between the other two models is the interest group theory which argues that moral panic tends to manifest from more middle (or meso) level power interests. Groups of professionals, religions, and institutions may play a role is flexing their own investment in the panic. They may be able to influence media coverage of the issue or even political forces. The combination of various interest groups may help to propel the panic to the forefront of media coverage.

Looking at these different models shows that there is an inherent social stratification to them. Stratification manifests here seemingly through the distribution of power. However, stratification can also manifest depending on the target of the panic (see below in examples).

Elements of Moral Panics

Staying with Goode & Ben-Yehuda (2009), they further argue that there are five constituent elements to defining a moral panic.

Concern: a visible level of concern over a particular issue should become apparent. Concerns about societal consequences of a given issue or group become a real fear which can be measured through opinion polls or become part of national conversation

Hostility: raised hostilities towards the group or issue perceived to be the threat to the existing moral order. Hostility also includes designating responsibility for the issue to a certain group with the consequences possibly manifesting within ‘us vs. them’ narratives. Groups then become the enemy and can be subject to ‘othering’ or stereotyping.

Consensus: reasonably widespread support for the threat to the moral order as being real. Although this does not have to be universal, it still requires a significant agreement between people that there is indeed a threat to the moral order. Here, they argue that moral panics occur in various sizes and that there is no exact, arbitrary point at which a moral panic becomes its namesake. Moral panics thus can occur within a single group or a single community in a kind of localised issue.

Disproportion: a sense of disproportionality to the issue exists. Claims as to the severity or size of the issue do not relate to the actual reality of the issue and can be over-exaggerated. Perhaps the classic Daily Mail ‘ invasion ’ by migrants is a good example of disproportionality.

Volatility: moral panics can become apparent very quickly and subside just as easily. Sometimes, moral panics become institutionalised through new laws and practices and sometimes moral panics come and go without any major change to the moral order. Therefore, there is an inherent uncertainness to them which reflects the meaning of panic. It can be a ‘flash in the pan’ so to speak.

Examples of Moral Panic

There are various examples of moral panics which have occurred throughout history and up to the present time. It is important to remember that often these events were not considered moral panics at the time, particularly if they occurred before Stan Cohens theory. Many events prior to Cohen then would now have been categorised as moral panics retrospectively which could be seen as a form of historical revisionism. This is not necessarily a bad thing as when we come to have new ways of thinking and interpreting, it often essential for historical events to be re-evaluated in the light of this new knowledge.

Some examples of moral panics prior to Cohen have been highlighted by Goode & Ben-Yehuda (2009) who suggest that the 19 th century Canudos massacre in Brazil constituted a moral panic as too did the sexual psychopath laws of the 1930’s to 1950’s. Others examples may also include the witchcraft trials of the 1600’s (Brown, 2018).

Post-Cohen, examples become much more forthcoming. The satanic panic of the 1980’s is perhaps the defining example but others include the ‘red scare’ which surrounded the idea of dangerous communists. More recent examples include the paedophile panic of the 2000’s, dangerous dogs which also seems to be having a current resurgence, terrorism, and immigration.

Association of Physicians (1832). The Journal of Health . 12th ed. [online] Internet Archive , Open Court Publishing Co. Available at: https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-health-conducted-by-association-of-physicians_1832-02-22_3_12/.

Brown, M. (2018). The Salem witch trials: Dehumanizing the different. The Histories , 15 (1), 10.

Cohen S. (1972). Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of the mods and rockers . MacGibbon and Kee.

‌Goode, E. and Ben-Yehuda, N. (2009). Moral panics: the social constructi on of deviance . Chichester, U.K. ; Malden, Ma: Wiley-Blackwell.

Maltby, A.H. (1830). The Quarterly Christian Spectator . New York: Baldwin & Treadway.

Sutton, M. (2013). The British Moral Panic Creation Myth is Bust. [online] Dysology. Available at: https://dysology.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-british-moral-panic-creation-myth.html [Accessed 1 Apr. 2023].

Thompson, K. (2013). Cultural trauma and moral panic: 9/11 and the mosque at ground zero affair. The Ashgate research companion to moral panics , 386-400.

Bibliography: Satanic Panic

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Brian is a current PhD student in sociology. His thesis focuses on a range of concepts including platonism, bureaucracy, and abstract space. When not destroying his mind with theories, he indulges in the occasional video game, anime, chinese takeaway, or maybe even a very rare pint.

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Article Contents

Introduction
The National Deviancy Conference
The New Deviancy Revolution
Whose Side Were We On? The Sociologist as Advocate
From Moral Indignation to Moral Panic
Disinterested Intervention?
The Moral Equation
Moral Panic
Moral Panics and the Sociological Imagination
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Moral Panic: Its Origins in Resistance, Ressentiment and the Translation of Fantasy into Reality

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Jock Young, Moral Panic: Its Origins in Resistance, Ressentiment and the Translation of Fantasy into Reality, The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 49, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 4–16, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azn074

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This paper addresses: the origins of moral panic in the New Deviancy Theory of the 1960s, particularly in the work of Albert Cohen and his notion of moral indignation which is rooted in the Nietzschian concept of Ressentiment; the emergence of the concept in the tumult of 1968 and in the intellectual context of the National Deviancy Conference; the key attributes of moral panic as arising out of fundamental changes in social structure and culture; and issues of moral disturbance because of conflicts in values. It concludes with a critique of recent uses of the concept and a reformulation of the notions of moral disturbance, disproportionality, displacement and volatility.

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Moral panic

A moral panic is an exaggerated media reaction to behaviour that deviates from the norms and values of society and causes moral entrepreneurs, such as the police, church leaders, politicians, and the media themselves, to question whether the moral fabric of society is falling apart. Folk devils is the term given to those that commit the act that cause the moral panic. The terms folk devils and moral panics come from the sociologist Stanley Cohen, who researched clashes in British seaside towns in the early 1960s between two groups of young people: 'the mods' and 'the rockers'. Both groups were identified as being part of a moral decline from the younger generation, and the initial small-scale clashes were exaggerated in the national press. This led to a clampdown by politicians and greater police presence at British seaside towns during public holidays. As a result, more crime occurred, and the scale of the clashes was once again exaggerated. This led Cohen to argue that the role of the media and the police in these clashes had led to deviancy amplification - increasing the level of crime that occurred through focusing more attention on the clashes. Moral panics and folk devils has become a large part of the reporting of behaviour that mainstream society sees as deviant. In recent years, moral panics have focused on the level of knife crime in London, the role of urban music in gangland culture, electronic gaming, welfare dependency and migration into the UK.

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Moral Panic: Who Benefits From Public Fear?

Moral panics maintain the status quo..

Posted July 20, 2015 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

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Public fear , and those responsible for creating or promoting it, are major topics of discussion these days. The sociological and criminological concept known as moral panic offers valuable insights into how and why powerful social agents such as the news media and politicians deliberately create public concern or fear of an individual or group.

Moral panic has been defined as a situation in which public fears and state interventions greatly exceed the objective threat posed to society by a particular individual or group who is/are claimed to be responsible for creating the threat in the first place.

The moral panic concept was developed and popularized by the late South African criminologist Stanley Cohen when he explained the public reaction to disturbances by youths called “mods and rockers” at seaside resorts in Brighton, England during the 1960's. Cohen’s work illustrated how those reactions influenced the formation and enforcement of social policy, law, and societal perceptions of threats posed by the youth groups.

Since its inception, the moral panic concept has been applied to a wide range of social problems including but not limited to youth gangs, school violence, child abuse, Satanism, youth wilding, flag burning, illegal immigration and the Iraq war .

Central to the moral panic concept is an argument that public concern or fear over an alleged social problem is mutually beneficial to state officials—that is, politicians and law enforcement authorities—and the news media. The relationship between state officials and the media is symbiotic in that politicians and law enforcement need communication channels to distribute their rhetoric and the media need tantalizing news content to attract a wide audience which, in turn, attracts advertisers.

Additionally, moral panics have three distinguishing characteristics. First, there is a focused attention on the behavior, whether real or imagined, of certain individuals or groups that are transformed into what Cohen referred to as “folk devils” by the mass media. This is accomplished when the media strip these folk devils of all favorable characteristics and apply exclusively negative ones.

Second, there is a gap between the concern over a condition and the objective threat it poses. Typically, the objective threat is far less than popularly perceived due to how it is presented by authorities.

Third, there is a great deal of fluctuation over time in the level of concern over a condition. The typical pattern begins with the discovery of the threat, followed by a rapid rise and then peak in public concern, which then subsequently, and often abruptly, subsides.

Finally, public hysteria over a perceived problem often results in the passing of legislation that is highly punitive, unnecessary, and serves to justify the agendas of those in positions of power and authority.

Moral panic is both a public and political response to an exaggeration or distortion of the threat posed to society by some allegedly harmful individual or group. More specifically, moral panic includes an exaggeration of certain events by enhancing the empirical criteria such as the number of individuals involved, the level and extent of violence, and the amount of damage caused.

Of course, this is not something that happens spontaneously, but rather, is a result of the complex dynamics and interplay among several social actors. As originally explained by Cohen, at least five sets of social actors are involved in a moral panic. These include: 1) folk devils, 2) rule or law enforcers, 3) the media, 4) politicians, and 5) the public.

First, in the lexicon of moral panic scholars, folk devils are those individuals who are socially defined or alleged to be responsible for creating a threat to society. Unlike some deviants, folk devils are completely negative. They are the embodiment of evil and the antagonists in a moral panic drama.

Second, law enforcers such as the police, prosecutors or the military are vital to a moral panic as they are charged with upholding and enforcing the codes of conduct and official laws of the state. These agents of the state are expected to detect, apprehend and punish the folk devils. Law enforcers have a sworn duty and moral obligation to protect society from folk devils when they present themselves. Furthermore, law enforcers must work to justify and maintain their positions in society. A moral panic can offer law enforcers legitimacy and purpose by ridding society of folk devils that allegedly threaten its well-being.

Third, the media are a particularly powerful set of actors in the creation of a moral panic. Typically, news media coverage of certain events involving alleged folk devils is distorted or exaggerated. News coverage makes the folk devils appear to be much more threatening to society than they really are. Public concern and anxiety are heightened by journalistic hyperbole concerning the folk devils. Public concern and anxiety over the folk devils lead to moral panic.

Moreover, there are two important news media practices that contribute to moral panic. These are known as framing and priming . Framing refers to the way an issue is presented to the public or angle it is given by the news media. Framing involves calling attention to certain aspects of an issue while ignoring or obscuring other elements. In other words, framing gives meaning to an issue.

Dr. Gaye Tuchman proposed that the news media rely on “news frames” to determine what events to cover and how to cover them. Just as the photographer’s choice of lens affects a photograph, the journalist’s choice of news frame affects a story. Tuchman theorized that journalists select news frames for a story based in part on routine procedures and the organizational constraints of their particular medium.

In addition, the choice of frame is influenced by prior news frames, the power and authority of news sources, history, and even ideology. Thus, news frames are contested or negotiated phenomena rather than being based solely on objective events. Most importantly, an audience will react very differently to an issue or story depending on how it is framed by the news media.

In contrast, priming is a psychological process whereby the news media emphasis on a particular issue not only increases the salience of the issue on the public agenda, but also activates previously acquired information about that issue in people’s memories. The priming mechanism explains how the news frame used in a particular story can trigger an individual’s preexisting attitudes, beliefs and prejudices regarding that issue.

An example of priming would be the triggering of varied individual responses such as outrage or pity to the framing of Dr. Conrad Murray—Michael Jackson’s accused killer and personal physician—during his 2011 manslaughter trial. Given the news media’s prior framing of the legendary Michael Jackson as an eccentric and troubled genius, people naturally had different reactions to the framing of Dr. Murray due to their own individual interpretations of the image of Jackson.

Fourth, politicians are also vital actors in a moral panic drama. As elected officials who must operate in the court of public opinion, politicians must present themselves as the protectors of the moral high ground in society. Similar to law enforcers, politicians have a sworn duty and moral obligation to protect society from folk devils when they arise.

Politicians often fuel a moral panic by aligning themselves with the news media and law enforcers in a moral crusade against the evils introduced by the folk devils. In other instances, such as the U.S. war on drugs launched in the late 1980's, a key politician such as President Ronald Reagan may define the folk devils—that is, urban crack cocaine dealers—and precipitate a moral panic over the evils of crack cocaine and alleged threats these evils present.

The fifth and final set of actors, the public, is the most important player in the creation of a moral panic. Public agitation or concern over the folk devils is the central element of a moral panic. A moral panic only exists to the extent that there is an outcry from the public over the alleged threat posed by the folk devils.

Moreover, the success of politicians, law enforcers and the media in precipitating and sustaining a moral panic is ultimately contingent upon how successfully they fuel concern and outrage toward the folk devils among the public.

Can you think of a recent social phenomenon that can be considered a moral panic?

Scott Bonn is a criminologist, best-selling author, professor and TV analyst. Follow him on Twitter or visit his website .

Scott Bonn, Ph.D., is a criminologist, TV news commentator, and best-selling author of Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World's Savage Murderers.

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Who Would Want to Go to a College Like This?

A silhouette of a graduate, in a cap and gown and seen from behind, looking up.

By Tressie McMillan Cottom

Opinion Columnist

The moral panic about “woke” campuses has metastasized into actual legislation, and not just in the swampy idylls of Florida. Last week the governor of Alabama signed a bill that purports to limit the teaching of “divisive” topics in its colleges and universities. The bill is similar to Florida’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public colleges, which was signed into law last May. Both are all-out attacks on learning by excommunicating liberal ideas from the classroom. Other state legislatures have also been busy. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Republican lawmakers have proposed 81 anti-D.E.I. bills across 28 states. (So far, 33 haven’t become law, and 11 have.)

Because most students attend public universities, state-level threats to higher education are especially troubling. While the federal government has outsize authority, states have more direct political reach. Republican leaders in the most reactionary states are banking that their appeals to moral panics about teaching history, race, gender and identity will attract donors and political favor. Bills already passed in Florida and Alabama are examples of shortsighted, counterintuitive legislative overreach. This political theater lifts up a caricature of college, in which coddled minds are seduced into liberal ideas. Without university leaders, politicians or voters mounting a defense of faculty governance and democratic speech, anti-woke reactionaries can remake college into the very thing they claim it is: cloistered institutions that cannot respond to what their students want and need.

It is hard to combat legislative overreach in states where gerrymandering and the structure of elections favor reactionary Republicans. But unlike in K-12 schools, in higher education, the students hold a tremendous amount of power. Public colleges and universities need students’ tuition dollars. If states become hostile to students’ values, those students could choose to go elsewhere or to forgo college altogether. That would set up a standoff between right-wing political favor and students’ dollars. But first, students would have to be paying attention. They would have to care. And they would have to be willing to choose colleges that match their values.

That is why I read with interest a recent report put out by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup on how policies and laws shape college enrollment. Part of a larger survey about students’ experiences of higher education, the report left me with one major takeaway: The national debate about so-called woke campuses does not reflect what most college students care about. It is worth looking at the report’s key findings. They underscore how unhinged our national debate over higher education has become and how misaligned Republican-led public higher education systems are with the bulk of college students. It isn’t hard to imagine that students could vote with their feet, avoiding schools in states that are out of step with their values.

The report names four reactionary changes in the national policy conversation that might shape students’ feelings about going to or being enrolled in college. First, there’s the group of bills against teaching supposedly divisive concepts, as in Alabama and Florida. Second, there’s a 2022 Supreme Court decision on concealed carry permits for firearms. Students fear that it signals how states with more restrictive gun regulations will change their campus gun policies in anticipation of legal challenges. Third, there are the sweeping changes to the availability of reproductive health care that came after the fall of Roe v. Wade . The Wild West of different abortion bans, legal challenges to Plan B and birth control will shape students’ experiences of college . Finally, there’s the Supreme Court decision in 2023 that effectively ended race-based affirmative action in admissions. States are already broadly interpreting that decision to include scholarships and programming.

If you are applying to college in 2024, you are tasked with not just choosing a major at a college where you can be happy and that may admit you at a price you can afford. You are also considering if you will be safe from gun violence, able to get medical care if you need it, qualified to use some types of financial aid and likely to encounter a liberal arts education that could improve the trajectory of your life.

I read the report closely for takeaways and what some of the fine-grained data points mean. The big context is that most students still choose colleges based on quality, cost, reputation and job prospects. Because I am interested in which of the four reactionary changes matter most (and to whom), I pulled those out of the list of all things that matter to students. Students care about — from most to least important — gun violence, “anti-woke” laws and reproductive health care. Because race-based affirmative action is measured somewhat differently from the other concerns, it is not ranked.

I lived through a campus shooting last year . As I watched college students climb calmly out of windows to escape the building, I realized this is a generation raised on constant shooting drills. That might explain why 38 percent of students who study on campus said they were worried about gun violence at their schools. Campus gun policies mattered at least somewhat to 80 percent of those surveyed. And of those who cared, students who wanted more restrictive gun policies outweighed those who preferred looser policies by five to one, according to the report.

As for those “divisive” concepts? Students want them. A majority of students who cared about those issues, the report notes, said they did not want restrictions on classroom instruction. Even more notable, students’ opinions do not align with the rabid political partisanship that dominates headlines. In a look at the students who care about this issue, some political differences might be expected. And there are some. But the good news is that they aren’t nearly as partisan as one might imagine. Even 61 percent of Republicans who cared about this issue when choosing a college preferred a state that did not restrict instruction on topics related to race and gender. That’s compared with 83 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of independents.

It is remarkable, given these data points, how little politicians and the public are talking about how afraid college students are — not of new ideas but of being shot on campus.

Fears about reproductive health ranked third among these changes; 71 percent of those surveyed said that a state’s reproductive health care policies would influence where they chose to go to college. The gender split here was a mixed bag. While many men cared about reproductive health, women were, by 18 percentage points, more likely than men to prefer states with fewer restrictions on reproductive health care. It is impossible to claim causation, but hackneyed culture wars about gender are not happening in a vacuum. They animate men’s and women’s values. The data suggests that it will be hard to recruit men (who are inclined to want more health care restrictions for women) and make female students feel cared for and safe. There may not be a way for a single college to serve both masters.

The Supreme Court affirmative action decision’s role in shaping students’ college choices is harder to parse than the other reactionary changes. People do not have a common understanding of what affirmative action means or how it works. Even so, 45 percent of those surveyed said the ruling would shape their decision of which school to attend or if they went to college at all.

While the idea of woke campuses may get attention and motivate parts of the reactionary Republican base, the report says that those partisan differences are moderate among students. “Most current and prospective students of all political parties who say these issues are important to their enrollment,” the report notes, “prefer more restrictive gun policies, less restrictive reproductive health care laws and fewer regulations” on curriculums.

Put more simply: Republicans must seem like aliens — if not dinosaurs — to the very college students they claim to be saving from hostile college campuses.

Debates about what happens on college campuses are proxies for partisan politics. They are also convenient ruses for clawing back the nominal democratization that higher education underwent during the last half of the 20th century. Those of us who see education as something more noble than a political football should care about the way partisan attacks and sensational headlines will harm real people trying to make sense of their lives.

Students go to college because they want jobs, they want to be educated or they want to be respected by others (or some combination of all three). A college or university implicitly promises them that it has the legitimacy to allow access, foster learning and confer status. The trick is that when universities play into the con game of moral panics about woke campuses, they become the thing we fear.

The loudest story about American colleges is disconnected from what college students care about. Even so, the nation’s diverse, aspirational college students are trying to make college choices that align with their political values. According to this survey, they are remarkably progressive, fair-minded and unafraid of intellectual challenge. If only our politics lived up to their values.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (@ tressiemcphd ) became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2022. She is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science; the author of “Thick: And Other Essays”; and a 2020 MacArthur fellow.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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17 Famous Moral Panic Examples (2024)
Moral Panic Concept
(PDF) Moral Panic
What is Moral Panic?
Stan Cohen Moral Panic. Quick essay on moral panics effects.
Moral Panics and the Media

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COMMENTS

Moral Panic Concept
Moral panic can be traced back to 1960s in the works of Cohen who studied the role of the media in the mod and rocker riots (Cohen, 2011). There are various categories of moral panics such as religious, political, medical, media, crime, and sexual moral panics. Each of these categories has specific examples of moral panics.
'Moral panic'
This page of the essay has 2,464 words. Download the full version above. The term 'moral panic' can be defined as a 'disproportional and hostile social reaction to a condition, person or group defined as a threat to societal values'. It is a term commonly associated with the media where stereotyping is represented and this leads to the ...
Moral Panics
Moral panic has an uncertain relationship to many recent developments in sociological and criminological thought. It threatens to be overwhelmed or sidelined by new insights from theories of moral regulation or risk, conceptualizations of the culture of fear, or the social psychology of collective emotion. ...
Moral Panic and Folk Devils
Moral panic is a situation in which media reporting has created a folk devil of a particular social group, and the public demands the authorities that something be done about it. This expression of concern is described as a moral panic because it is based on an outraged sense of offense to public standards of behavior.
Moral panic
moral panic, phrase used in sociology to describe an artificially created panic or scare.Researchers, often influenced by critical conflict-oriented Marxist themes, have demonstrated that moral entrepreneurs have demonized "dangerous groups" to serve their own religious, political, economic, social, cultural, and legal interests. Although the aims, forms, dynamics, and outcomes of moral ...
A Sociological Understanding of Moral Panic
A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large.Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by the news media, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or policies that target the source of the panic.
Crime Waves and Moral Panics
Homicides are up, which has both public safety and racial justice implications. Crime wave moral panics are often just that, moral panics. Even if founded in fact, their coverage often flattens the complexity that is our society. Editor's note: This topic was inspired by a powerful 1981 essay on crime waves and violence written by Ernest ...
On the concept of moral panic
Abstract. The article develops a critical analysis of the concept of moral panic and its sociological uses. Arguing that some of the concept's subtlety and power has been lost as the term has become popular, the article foregrounds its Freudian and Durkheimian aspects and explicates the epistemological and ethical issues involved in its use.
Moral Panic
Satanic Panic, 1980s-90s. QAnon, 2017-present. Moral panics arise when distorted mass media campaigns are used to create fear, reinforce stereotypes and exacerbate preexisting divisions in the world, often based on race, ethnicity and social class. Many social problems have been the basis of distorted mass media campaigns.
Moral panic
Moral panics are generally fuelled by media coverage of social issues. The phenomenon was first described in 1972 in relation to the 'Mods & Rockers' groups of the 1960s. Since then moral panics have occurred in relation to 'ritual satanic abuse', that was perceived to be widespread in the 1980s, and paedophilia, which led to vigilante ...
What Are Moral Panics?
A moral panic is essentially an irrational fear surrounding a perceived threat to an existing moral order. Moral panics tend to be located within notions of deviance as moral panics tend to revolve around events which are seen as deviant to the existing moral order. This article looks at the origins of moral panics, the different types of moral ...
Moral Panic
A moral panic is a moral disturbance centring on claims that direct interests have been violated—an act of othering sometimes expressed in terms of demonization, sometimes with humanitarian undertones that are grossly disproportionate to the event or the activities of the individuals concerned. It is presented in stereotypical terms.
Moral Panic: Who Benefits From Public Fear?
Central to the moral panic concept is an argument that public concern or fear over an alleged social problem is mutually beneficial to state officials—that is, politicians and law enforcement ...
Moral Panics
The phrase "moral panic" was initially coined by Jock Young in an essay in Stanley Cohen's Images of Deviance (Cohen, 1971) and was subsequently developed theoretically and applied empirically in Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Cohen, 2002 [1972]). Cohen studied two British youth movements of the 1960s, the Mods and Rockers, whose feuding in 1964 triggered what he analyzed as a moral ...
(PDF) Moral Panic
The moral panic is an intense, heightened sense of exaggerated concern about a threat or supposed threat posed by deviants or "folk devils," a category of people who, presumably, engage in ...
Moral panic
Moral panic. Witch-hunting is a historical example of mass behavior potentially fueled by moral panic. 1555 German print. A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society.
Moral panic
A moral panic is an exaggerated media reaction to behaviour that deviates from the norms and values of society and causes moral entrepreneurs, such as the police, church leaders, politicians, and the media themselves, to question whether the moral fabric of society is falling apart. Folk devils is the term given to those that commit the act that cause the moral panic.
Do Not Panic. It's Just a Moral Panic.
A moral panic is the pervasive belief that some great wickedness is threatening society and must be stopped. Calling something a moral panic is a way to argue that people's fears or concerns are ...
The Concept Of Moral Panics
The Concept Of Moral Panics. Societies generally appear to be the subject of moral panic now and then. Moral panic is a condition where there is a concern over the behaviour of certain group or a particular category and is a threat to the societal values and interests. (Cohen 1973). In the past it has been the 'drug culture' of the fifties ...
Moral Panic Essay
Moral panic is a form of collective behaviour that from one day to the other considers a certain group of people dangerous. The reasons might vary from fake rumours to real (exaggerated) facts. The period of a moral panic usually ends with social actions either in form of attacking the "other" (in the case of a Satanic Ritual) or in changing ...
Moral Panic: Who Benefits From Public Fear?
Central to the moral panic concept is an argument that public concern or fear over an alleged social problem is mutually beneficial to state officials—that is, politicians and law enforcement ...
Stan Cohen Moral Panic. Quick essay on moral panics effects
In this essay I will be looking at a specific piece of work conducted by sociologist Stanley Cohen on moral panics. I will be defining what a moral panic is, how a moral panic comes to be and will also be discussing how moral panics construct particular identities and whether these identities tell the true story or if they are just figures of imagination based on the moral panic.
Understanding Moral Panics: Exploring Crime and Criminality
This essay delves into the concept of moral panics and its implications on perceptions of crime and criminality, supported by four identified examples of moral panics experienced in the past. ... Moral panics can either be novel occurrences or reiterations of past concerns that gain heightened significance within society. Criminology, as a ...
Opinion
The moral panic about "woke" campuses has metastasized into actual legislation, and not just in the swampy idylls of Florida. Last week the governor of Alabama signed a bill that purports to ...