Moral panic Моральна паніка (ua)

the term was first applied by the criminologist Jock Young to sudden expressions of often irrational mass anxiety and alarm directed at ‘crime waves’ or other supposed evidence of disorder and social breakdown (including promiscuity and immigration). The media are implicated through their tendency to amplify such ‘panics’. They are also sometimes objects of moral panics, when alarm at their harmful effects suddenly gains currency (e.g. in the form of crime waves, suicides or rioting). New media, such as computer games and the Internet, tend to generate some degree of panic at alleged harm to their (young) users.