A larger recent scholarship suggests that, while social problems start with conditions open to empirical verification, how they develop and are represented is the result of much more complicated social processes. Moral panics were defined as socially constructed social problems characterized by a reaction, both in media representation and in political forums, out of proportion to the actual threat. Two additional features of moral panics were mentioned. Jenkins emphasizes the role in the creation and management of moral panics of moral entrepreneurs, who have vested interests in perpetuating the specific fears. The social construction of problems is too complicated a process to be attributed entirely to the initiative of identifiable lobbies or groups.
Moral panics have at their beginnings objective conditions and real dangers.
Contemporary Satanism has been occasionally deconstructed as an entirely invented social problem. It is certainly true that two serial killers or child abusers are two too many. But, in order to assess what social reaction is appropriate it does matter whether Satanists are some dozens or some thousands, pedophile Catholic priests are several hundreds or several thousands, and child abusers in general number in the thousands, the tens of thousands, or the millions. It also matters that reliable data are gathered about the relative prevalence of most serious incidents among a larger loosely defined category. Verbal abuse is today often classified within the general category of sexual abuse, including by courts of law in some countries.