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Bits of Falling Sky and Global Pandemics: Moral Panic and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
Abstract
Whether it's a story about crime, the weather, politics, Hollywood celebrities, or public health, sensationalistic and exploitative coverage is a media staple. The mass media's coverage of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the spring of 2003 was no exception. The media's construction of the source, virulence, and transmissibility of this disease, a previously unknown cousin of the common cold, diverged considerably from its medical realities and contributed to a widespread though short-lived moral panic. Drawing on work in the areas of the sociology of health and critical criminology, this article explores the claims-making activities behind the SARS “epidemic.” Specifically, it addresses how threats to the public well-being are manufactured by the media and how these threats draw upon past and present cultural myths of dangerous “others” and contribute to unwarranted public fear, intolerance, and distrust.
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“During the SARS outbreak in 2002 03, news agencies were held responsible for the exaggerated display of news, leading to mass anxiety, and xenophobia (Muzzatti, 2005).”
From Understanding coronaphobia (2020) · cites this paper as Muzzatti, 2005
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Metadata
- Authors
- Muzzatti, S. L.
- Affiliations
- Toronto Metropolitan University (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Muzzatti, Stephen L.
- ORCID
- Muzzatti, Stephen L.
- Venue
- Illness, Crisis & Loss
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2005-04
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 117-128
- ISSN
- 1054-1373 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6968
- OpenAlex
- W2772251717
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 1.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Illness Crisis & Loss (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Global Security and Public Health
- Keywords
- SARS, moral panic, media coverage of epidemics, public health communication, claims-making, dangerous other, public fear, cultural myths, critical criminology, medical sociology, 2003 SARS outbreak
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Bits of Falling Sky and Global Pandemics: Moral Panic and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/105413730501300203
- The paper
- Muzzatti, S. L. (2005). Bits of Falling Sky and Global Pandemics: Moral Panic and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Illness, Crisis & Loss. https://doi.org/10.1177/105413730501300203
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
