The event or events that trigger a panic may have been truly
newsworthy and cause for increased concern, but the discussion quickly
overruns the boundaries of the specific incident spirals upward.
Moral panics then, are those processes whereby members of a society
and culture become “morally sensitized” to the challenges and
menace posed to “their” accepted values and ways of life, by the
activities of groups defined as deviant. The process underscores the
importance of the mass media in providing, maintaining and
“policing” the available frameworks and definitions of deviance,
which structure both public awareness of, and attitudes towards,
social problems.
(O’Sullivan 1994: 186)Portrait of a Folk Devil
In the case of pit bull panics in the U.S., moral entrepreneurs never talked
specifically about the underlying conflict, but it was immediately
recognizable once articulated. Pit bulls are associated with a particular
stereotype: working-class males of a lower socioeconomic class who are
prone to excessive and mindless violence, criminal tendencies, drug and
alcohol abuse, and disregard or contempt for the common good due to a
lack of human empathy (Gladwell 2006). This lack of empathy has been
called “social alexithymia” and is found in many kinds of racist discourse
(Hill 2008: 96). The assumption is this: Just as there is no hope of
reasoning with an abused, out of control pit bull, there is no hope of
appealing to the better nature of the men who own them. Using this
example, we can trace the stages of a moral panic.
Ten simple steps to a moral panic
The elements of a moral panic do not follow one after the other in lock-
step. There will be some variation in tone and speed of the acceleration,
and on occasion a moral panic sputters and stalls in an early stage. The
example here is meant to be representative of the steps in a full-fledged
moral panic.