Moral panics direct outrage at a single easily identified target when the real problems have more complex roots.

Evidence

Challenging the Social Media Moral Panic: Preserving Free Expression under Hypertransparency (Cato Institute)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Folktales can escalate into moral panics in troubled times. — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 77; Moral panics reflect deeper social tensions rather than real threats. — Moral Panic; Moral panics arise from cultural strains caused by social change and serve as mechanisms of social control reinforcing existing power dynamics. — Moral Panic | Social Sciences and Humanities | Research Starters (+7 more)

Related

• Moral panics are characterized by an exaggerated, stylized folk devil perceived as threatening the social order, which attracts public hostility. (similarity 0.87)
• Moral panics arise from cultural strains caused by social change and serve as mechanisms of social control reinforcing existing power dynamics. (similarity 0.87)
• Moral panics reflect deeper social tensions rather than real threats. (similarity 0.86)
• Moral panics are often rooted in political struggles over values. (similarity 0.83)
• 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. (similarity 0.83)
• Moral panic is a social phenomenon where a group is portrayed as a significant threat to societal values, resulting in heightened fear and the push for new legislation. (similarity 0.81)
• Cohen (1972, p. 9) defined moral panic as a condition where a group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests, presented in a stylized way by mass media. (similarity 0.80)
• The concept of a permanent moral panic contradicts its definition. (similarity 0.79)
• Even if a specific moral panic does not seem to leave immediate traces of routinization, its very happening may leave memories and cognitive deposits. (similarity 0.79)
• A moral panic happens when society reacts with exaggerated fear or anger to a group seen as a threat to moral values. (similarity 0.79)
• Even without immediate traces of routinization, moral panics create cognitive deposits and memories that may make the next panic have longer-lasting effects; thus no moral panic should be considered trivial. (similarity 0.79)
• Moral panic is a widespread fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values of a community, first theorized by Stanley Cohen in 1972. (similarity 0.79)
• Fuelling moral panics and creating folk devils are blunt public health tools with potential for consequences that bludgeon the vulnerable. (similarity 0.79)
• Moral panics recruit state agencies of social control to contain perceived threats (similarity 0.79)