IN THE AGE OF CANCEL CULTURE, SHAMING CAN BE HEALTHY FOR ONLINE COMMUNITIES – A POLITICAL SCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHEN AND HOW
In the Age of Cancel Culture, Shaming Can Be Healthy for Online Communities – a Political Scientist Explains When and How
April 16th, 16PM April 16th, 16PM(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
Jennifer Forestal,
Loyola University Chicago
(THE CONVERSATION) "Cancel culture" has a bad reputation. There is
growing anxietyover this practice of publicly shaming people online for
violating social normsranging from
inappropriate jokesto controversial
business practices.
Online shaming can be a
wildly disproportionate responsethat
violates the privacyof the shamed while offering them no good way to defend themselves. These consequences lead some critics to claim that online shaming creates a "
hate storm" that destroys lives and reputations, leaves targets with "
permanent digital baggage" and
threatens the fundamental rightto publicly express yourself in a democracy. As a result, some scholars have declared that online shaming is a "
moral wrong and social ill."
But is online public shaming necessarily negative? I'm a political scientist who studies the
relationship between digital technologies and democracy. In my research, I show how public shaming can be a
valuable tool for democratic accountability. However, it is more likely to provide these positive effects within a clearly defined community whose members have many overlapping connections.
When shaming helps
Public shaming is a "
horizontal" form of social sanctioning, in which people hold one another responsible for violating social norms, rather than appealing to higher authorities to do so. This makes it especially useful in
democratic societies, as well as in cases where the shamers
face power imbalancesor
lack access to formal authoritiesthat could hold the shamed accountable.
For example, public shaming can be an effective strategy for
challenging corporate power and behavioror maintaining journalistic norms in the face of
plagiarism. By
harnessingsocial pressure, public shaming can both
motivate people to change their behaviorand
deter future violationsby others.
But public shaming generally needs to occur in a specific social context to have these positive effects. First, everyone involved must
recognizeshared social normsand the shamer's
authority to sanctionviolations of them. Second, the shamed must
care about their reputation. And third, the shaming must be accompanied by the possibility of
reintegration, allowing the shamed to atone and be welcomed back into the fold.
This means that public shaming is more likely to deliver accountability in
clearly defined communitieswhere members have many overlapping connections, such as
schools where all the parents know one another.
In communal spaces where people frequently run into each other, like
workplaces, it is more likely that they understand shared social norms and the obligations to follow them. In these environments, it is more likely that people
care about what others thinkof them, and that they
know how to apologizewhen needed so that they can be reintegrated in the community.
Communities that connect
Most online shamings, however, do not take place in this kind of positive social context. On the social platform X, previously known as Twitter, which hosts many high-profile public shamings,
users generally lack many shared connectionswith one another. There is no singular "X community" with universally shared norms, so it is difficult for users to collectively sanction norm violations on the platform.
Moreover, reintegration for targets of shamings on X is nearly impossible, since it is not clear to what community they should apologize, or how they should do so. It should not be surprising, then, that most highly publicized X shamings – like those of PR executive
Justine Sacco, who was shamed for a racist tweet in 2013, and
Amy Cooper, the "Central Park Karen" – tend to degenerate into campaigns of
harassment and stigmatization.
But just because X shamings often turn pathological
does notmean allonline shamings do. On
Threadless, an online community and e-commerce site for artists and designers, users effectively use public shaming to police norms around intellectual property. Wikipedians'
use of public "reverts"– reversals of edits to entries – has helped enforce the encylopedia's standards even with anonymous contributors. Likewise,
Black Twitterhas long used the practice of public shaming as an effective mechanism of accountability.
What sets these cases apart is their community structure. Shamings in these contexts are more productive because they occur within clearly defined groups in which members have more shared connections.
Acknowledging these differences in social context helps clarify why, for example, when a Reddit user was
shamed by his subcommunityfor posting an inappropriate photo, he
accepted the rebuke, apologized and was welcomed backinto the community. In contrast, those shamed on X often issue
vague apologiesbefore disengaging entirely.
Crossing online borders
There are still
very real consequencesof moving public shaming online. Unlike in most offline contexts, online shamings often play out on a
massive scalethat makes it more difficult for users to understand their connections with one another. Moreover, by creating opportunities to expand and overlap networks, the internet can
blur community boundariesin ways that complicate the practice of public shaming and make it more likely to turn pathological.
For example, although the Reddit user was reintegrated into his community, the shaming soon spread to other subreddits, as well as national news outlets, which ultimately led him to delete his Reddit account altogether.
This example suggests that online public shaming is not straightforward. While shaming on X is rarely productive, the practice on other platforms, and in offline spaces characterized by clearly defined communities such as college campuses, can provide important public benefits.
Shaming, like other practices of a healthy democracy, is a tool whose value depends on how it's used.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here:
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