From Media Hypes to Moral Panics: Theoretical and Methodological Tools

The moral panic concept has been widely and increasingly used in scholarship in the last several years. Some of its critical problems, however, remain unresolved. Features like concern and disproportionality, distinctions between moral panics, moral crusades and media hypes, the heuristic validity of the moral panic concept in risk society and finally the role of the media are still disputed or overlooked. In addition, the stages described in Stanley Cohen’s study are one of the least developed aspects of this body of research. I argue that a reassessment of Cohen’s stages may help operationalize the concept and see these problems in a different light. Based on two case studies I conducted in the late 1990s in Italy, I suggest that typical stages are clearly recognizable. They are the outcome of the way in which the media operate in these circumstances; a way that produces similar trends in other emergencies constructed by the media, sometimes called media hypes. The similarity of the process of media activation with regard to different topics has led to an excessive broadening of the concept of moral panic, which now tends to be applied to almost every domain. In this way the “panic” dimension of the concept has been given probably too much importance. On the contrary, the “moral” dimension is sometimes forgotten. In my two case studies there is a striking difference in how morality is used. In the absence of folk devils, I argue, the moral panic concept loses its specificity