Cohen was using this term for a phenomenon in Great Britain in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics primarily about the rockers who vandalised in a small town in the early 60 . Goode and Ben-Yehuda presented and analysed various moral panics through history and tried to search for common indicators. In this paper I argue that moral panic in not just a mass sociological phenomenon or a concept of sociology. It represents the collective fear of the society from the other . I suggest that today moral panic is not simply a matter of exaggerated social problems, but it is a fear of losing control over the other and the fear of the truth about the other .
Moral panic intends to reinforce the boundaries between the self and the other .
My case study is the moral panic of pornography on the Internet. Moral panic is a form of collective behaviour that from one day to the other considers a certain group of people dangerous. Moral panics usually take place at the time of significant changes in society, when there is a great fear of loss of control. In these times collective consciousness needs to be reinforced so that society can locate new boundaries. Other examples of moral panics are over witchcrafts, satanic rituals, drugs, handguns, teenage pregnancy, TV violence, Internet and so on.