Video games and discourses of fear: Towards medium panic

This paper aims to point out the discourses of fear of video games, which are present in the media and the public appearances of politicians and scientists. The aim is also to test the hypothesis of medium panic. It is a new term whose meaning is derived primarily from the terms moral panic and media panic. The purpose of the paper is to make an argument in favor of its application in recognizing and explaining the fear of video games in various social groups. Medium panic implies fear that arises from the way the media is structured and how user interaction with the media is established. In addition to media content - representation of violence, narratives, and characters - which is most often the target of criticism, the focus in this article is on other formal elements. Those are mechanics, rules, and goals as well as their phenomenological aspects - interactivity and immersion - which distinguish video games from other media. The term media panic is proposed as an analytical tool in future research of moral panic in its wider and media panic in its narrower sense.