Moral Panic

A moral panic occurs when a widespread feeling of irrational fear spreads throughout the community leading to threat to be exaggerated. The Covid 19 pandemic brought with it a wave of hate against the Asian community, not only in the west as covered in Media but also in Asia itself, weird right?

The Concern Stage occurs when an event sparks social anxiety, by mid year 2020 COVID cases in Indonesia rose every day reaching thousands, by the end of the year new cases would reach thousands by the day. The Hostility Stage was reached when a subculture is seen as folk devils and targeted by media in this case a subculture of Indonesian society, politically driven media would blame Chinese Indonesians of being agents of Communist China and were to blame for the virus in an act of "othering" them. 

The Consensus was reached when the fear takes over the narrative, people would share messages in WhatsApp groups which recommended people to stay away from Chinese Indonesians as reported by The Diplomat which also reported that at times such messages would come from religious figureheads. 

Disproportionality happens when the fear is exaggerated, the majority community of Indonesia especially those from the lower working classes would listen to the media that bashed Chinese Indonesians and eventually developed a behaviour that made them suspicious and anxious about the Chinese community.

Volatility occurs when a change is made in society though sometimes the fear fades away and is replaced by another fear, in this case the othering of the Chinese Indonesian community only aggravated during elections and during the beginning of the pandemic, the fear has in a way been reduced but still lies in the background after being replaced by other irrational fears such as trumpets and bras that were almost banned due to "being a jewish invention" that would drag its users to hell.