Who Uses the Moral Panic Concept? A Bibliometric Analysis of Moral Panic Scientific Literature

In this paper, the bibliometric approach was used for the investigation of the research field organized around the concept of moral panic. To examine the current condition of the moral panic field, we analyzed the papers published in the WoS from 1972–2019. As a result of our study, the thematic areas, and the most influential actors in the field were revealed and described. Today, the moral panic filed is dominated by sociologists. Among the leaders in terms of citations are authors from financially-developed countries. This shows that there is economic inequality in the production of papers. The most cited are publications devoted to online studies. The results of this research demonstrate that there is no noticeable erosion among the empirical contexts, where the concept is used because children and youth are still the most popular object of moral panic studies. They are the classical objects for moral panic papers. At the same time, it could be argued that this field is still in the process of development because the theoretical and empirical papers that prevail are connected with the integration of the moral panic theory with other theories and concepts. We suppose this approach to the conceptual analysis developed in this paper could be useful for the revision of other fields developed around controversial concepts in sociology.