Stan Cohen - Folk Devils and Moral Panics

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.^[1] According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."^[2] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils."