What is a moral panic?

Over the Easter weekend of 1964, a few hundred British teenagers fought on the beach at Clacton. The newspapers wrote about war. The sociologist Stanley Cohen read the headlines, compared them with what had actually happened – and wrote a book that gave us the term moral panic.

Cohen saw a pattern. First, a group or a phenomenon is singled out as a threat. The media amplify the picture, experts and politicians weigh in, and soon there are calls for action. Often a law follows. Then the panic ebbs away, and a few years later everyone wonders what all the fuss was about.

Five signs

Later researchers have described five hallmarks: concern, hostility towards a group that has been singled out, broad consensus, a reaction out of proportion to the threat – and the fact that the panic is fleeting. It flares up quickly and vanishes just as quickly.

That doesn't mean the worry is always wrong

Sometimes those sounding the alarm were right. Tobacco and lead were more dangerous than anyone cared to believe, and there the problem was rather that the warnings were brushed aside.

That is why we give every panic in the archive two meters. What's interesting isn't that people worried – it's how wide the gap turned out to be between the worry and the reality.