Folk Devils and Moral Panics in the COVID-19 Pandemic

"By applying the analytical tools of moral panic, a group of dedicated first-rate interdisciplinary scholars shine fresh new and innovative lights on global reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Readers will thus find a fascinating and positively reinforcing learning experience."

Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Professor of Sociology, The Hebrew University, Israel

"This book demonstrates that the concept of moral panic is very much alive and well. Each chapter is essential reading and offers novel ways of understanding the COVID pandemic. This anthology is destined to be a classic piece of scholarship, one that exemplifies what the late Jock Young refers to the criminological imagination."

Walter S. DeKeseredy, Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University, USA

"How can we regard concern over an objective medical threat to the health and life of billions of humans as a moral panic? The authors of these fine, informative, and sophisticated essays deftly address this guiding question in their analysis of the COVID-19 outbreaks in eight countries, thereby breaking with "purist" scholars of the moral panic and broadening the concept's reach. A first-rate contribution to the moral panic literature and a must-read for researchers of social epidemiology."

Erich Goode, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Stony Brook University, USA

"Stan Cohen and Stuart Hall's insights about moral panics revived and astutely applied to the COVID crisis."

Tony Platt, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Affiliated Scholar, Center for Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, USA

"Folk Devils and Moral Panics in the COVID-19 Pandemic offers a very insightful exploration of moral panics during the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together an impressive array of multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional perspectives and expands the extant literature on moral panics, highlighting their novel manifestations and implications in the current digital age. The book is a must-read for academics, researchers, and students studying the complex intersections of media dynamics and social reactions during periods of significant societal upheaval and transformation."

Pamela Ugwudike, Professor of Criminology, University of Southampton, UK