A Twenty-First Century Folk Devil

The concept of a ‘moral panic’ was developed by radical sociology in the 1970s, to critique scare narratives of the time that featured ‘black muggers’ and youth delinquents such as the mods and rockers. A moral panic can be based on real criminal acts or it can be entirely fantastical, but the phenomenon is driven not by any real event but by the opportunity it provides for moral mobilisation.