Abstract
The article discusses the possibilities and limits of the concept of moral panics almost fifty years after the concept was first formulated. It presents classic formulations of moral panics (Cohen 1972/2011, Goode, Ben Yehuda 2009) and also the most important revisions (Hall et al., Hier).
After that, it traces the debate between the most important critics (McRobbie, Thornton, Watney, Ungar and others) and their criticism of the various attributes of moral panic. The article concludes that we need to rethink both disproportionality and consensus as the main characteristics of the moral panic: due proportion cannot be judged scientifically, while with regard to consensus, we have to consider the situation of the divisions in society and the possibilities of various factions in society to mobilize their own moral panic in their decentralized media networks.
This leads us to another point that we need to historicize a moral panic both as a historical episode and as the result of longue durée historical trends.