ABSTRACT
Moral panics are about locating evildoers, establishing the poisonous influence and iniquity of their actions, and rectifying the damage they’ve inflicted on the rest of us. Moral panic is a key concept in sociology, media and communication studies, where it is used to describe a certain kind of group or communal behavior. In the case of pit bull panics in the US, moral entrepreneurs never talked specifically about the underlying conflict, but it was immediately recognizable once articulated. There were a number of media reports on the Oakland controversy that were particularly interesting for unusual perspectives, observations, or negative slant and factual inaccuracies. The cost of living in Oakland is well above national averages. A person moving from Chicago to Oakland would pay approximately 11 percent more for groceries, 47 percent more for housing, 6 percent more on healthcare, while the cost of utilities will go down by about 20 percent.
