Moral Panic on Social Media Platforms: A Discourse Analysis of BBC News Posts on U.S.-Iran-Israel Conflict

Abstract

This study examines how war-related events are represented in Facebook posts published by BBC News within the contemporary digital news environment. Drawing on moral panic theory (Cohen, 1972; Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994) and framing theory (Entman, 1993), the study analyzes a dataset of 23 Facebook posts in order to investigate the linguistic as well as the discursive strategies through which conflict is constructed in social media news discourse. The findings reveal that war-related events are systematically framed through employing four dominant patterns: military escalation, crisis and instability, civilian vulnerability, and economic consequences. These frames are realized through recurring linguistic features, particularly the use of violence-related verbs (e.g., strike, launch, attack) and crisis-oriented vocabulary (e.g., tension, escalation, surge), which contribute to urgency and risk narratives construction. The analysis further demonstrates that these representations reflect partial alignment with elements of moral panic, particularly heightened concern and narrative consistency, while showing limited evidence of hostility and no obvious indication of disproportionality. Overall, the study argues that BBC News Facebook posts do not only report events but also actively construct structured interpretations of conflict through the use of systematic framing and linguistic strategies. The study contributes to research on digital news discourse through shedding light upon the role of social media in shaping public understanding of contemporary geopolitical events.