Social media virality intensifies societal threats, fueling moral panics and outrage expressions, as highlighted in a series of studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The concept of moral panics, originally coined in the 1970s, has found a new platform on social media, where potential threats are amplified, leading to daily outrage on various issues. The “social amplification model of moral panics” explains how virality on social media magnifies concerns, especially when aligned with users’ ideologies or targeting political opponents. Empirical studies and experiments demonstrate that highly shared content tends to provoke more outrage, indicating that social media not only spreads but also deepens the impact of moral panics by tapping into societal divisions and fears.
Virality on social media intensifies moral panics, according to new study