ABSTRACT
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic there have been narratives opposing those not complying with preventive measures or opposing public health interventions (generally depicted as the ‘folk devils’ in traditional media) to those promoting them. Online, however, a number of social media networks have been actively accusing a range of different, reverse ‘folk devils’ (researchers, doctors, politicians) of criminal and deviant acts. This turnabout has important implications for the hold of the concept of moral panic. By relying on a digital passive ethnography carried out on Italian-speaking digital fields, this contribution discusses how the notion of moral panic is challenged in the digital context, where the relationships between moral entrepreneurs and folk devils can become much more complex and fluid as digital affordances create shifts in the distribution of mediatic power.
