Moral panics on social media are fueled by signals of virality

Bibliographic Data

ID10158782
AuthorsCurtis Puryear (0000-0001-6067-4654, Kellogg's (Canada), corresponding author), Joseph A Vandello (0000-0001-9318-4002, University of South Florida), Kurt Gray (0000-0001-5816-2676)
Year2024
Volume127
Issue1
Pages84-103
Publication date2024-02-29
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1037/pspa0000379
PMID38421751
OpenAlexW4392298506
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Moral panics have regularly erupted in society, but they appear almost daily on social media. We propose that social media helps fuel moral panics by combining perceived societal threats with a powerful signal of social amplification-virality. Eight studies with multiple methods test a social amplification model of moral panics in which virality amplifies perceptions of threats posed by deviant behavior and ideas, prompting moral outrage expression. Three naturalistic studies of Twitter ( N = 237,230) reveal that virality predicts moral outrage in response to tweets about controversial issues, even when controlling for specific tweet content. Five experiments ( N = 1,499) reveal the causal impact of virality on outrage expression and suggest that feelings of danger mediate this effect. This work connects classic ideas about moral panics with ongoing research on social media and provides a perspective on the nature of moral outrage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Criminology · Moral development · Moral disengagement · Moral panic · Outrage · Perception · Political science · Politics · Social media · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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