Moral Panic

Today I learned a new key term from my media studies class which is moral panic. A moral p anic is an irrational fear of something that is being exaggerated by media. There's a theory that suggests that moral panic is something that the media does to distract audiences from the real problem by giving an irrational fear to audiences.

There are 5 stages of moral panic:

1. Concern, which is an event which sparks social anxiety

2. Hostility, is when subculture is seen as folk devil

3. Consensus, when it takes all narrative/news A.K.A. trending

4. Disproportionality, when the thread is exaggerated

5. Volutility, is when social changes are made and the moral panic usually fades away or gets replaced by a more recent moral panic

One of the recent examples of moral panic that happened in 2020 is during about the Corona Virus Desease or COVID-19. A quick explanation of what happened is that people are blaming Asians, especially Chinese to be responsible for the pandemic. This causes the stereotypical Asians to have to deal with COVID hate crime. Here is when it is divided into the five stages of moral panic:

1. Consensus: since covid is a virus that came from China, the moral panic started when an image and a video of Chinese eating a bat soup spreaded

2. Hostility: subculture, which is the Chinese, is seen as the reason why COVID happened

3. Consensus: takes many narrative and it became a trend https://youtu.be/FfMeHzVtnfs https://youtu.be/2Z1pOEjajaY https://youtu.be/br8O_6WIZz0

4. Disproportionality: thread is exaggerated as now all Asians are targeted regardless they're not from China, this plays a role in stereotypes as the stereotype suggests all Asians look alike

5. Volutility: many news and other medias now are trying to show that hitting Asians does not solve COVID problem