Whose agenda is it anyway: an exploration of cancel culture and political affiliation in the United States

Abstract

Cancel culture is a new catalyst for digital hate seen in various media platforms, in which large groups of people publicly criticize the victim's actions and withdraw their support from that victim, leading to serious consequences for their livelihood and wellbeing. This study examines how political leaning and cultural values affect a person's participation in cancel culture. To test this, a 3 × 2 × 2 online experiment was created, with each participant asked to watch a series of Tiktok-style videos about current partisan social justice issues in the United States and read comments from either Democrat or Republican supporters that "canceled" the creator of the video, indicating how they would react to such a video themselves. Results indicated that more liberal individuals were less likely to "cancel" than conservative or non-partisan individuals, but that there are no significant influences from the participants' political affiliation or self-construal that would affect their engagement in cancel culture. However, the stronger one's sense of honor, the more likely they are to engage in cancel culture behavior. Implications for our understanding of social media engagement and digital hate are discussed.

Cancel Culture in the Academia: The hispanic perspective

“…It is true that some researchers explain Cancel Culture in the context of polarization of the American society (Hetherington & Weiler, 2009), and surveys and research always count on the variable of identification with a political view (left/right and degrees among them) to justify the results (Cook et al, 2021). The Higher Education Research Institute (the most comprehensive source of information on college students in America) survey also confirms this polarization among the professoriates (Abrams & Khalid, 2020).…”

“…Chiou (2020) describes it as a form of digital vigilantism, a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizens' activity, and coordinate retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms. Others explain Cancel Culture as a catalyst of digital hate (Cook et al, 2021).…”

Digital Modernity

“…A second form is more political policing, denouncing those who, for example, have strong opinions about gender or race, or who use or have used language which is perceived as sexualised or racist, sometimes on public occasions but also in conversation intended to be private (Chiou, 2020;Cook et al, 2021;Gomez-Mejia, 2020, 319-321;Mueller, 2021;Ronson, 2015;Sailofsky, 2021). Denunciation often takes the form of doing perpetrators reputational harm, denying them access to public forums, and sometimes depriving them of their jobs and livelihoods.…”

“…The version of record is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1800000031 them (Bouvier and Machin, 2021). The perception that those denounced tend toward the political right (itself contested - Cook et al, 2021;Norris, 2021), while academics tend toward the political left, confuses the debate still further; academic communities have been accused (by both sides) of bad faith research and illegitimate suppression of free speech and academic freedom, and so the status of academic literature (and practice) is itself in question (Read and Leathwood, 2021;Rom and Mitchell, 2021;Suissa and Sullivan, 2021;Teixeira da Silva, 2021).…”

Comparing shades of darkness: trolling victims’ experiences on social media vs. online gaming

“…Trolling – a form of negatively perceived communication that exploits fellow netizens using website, game, or chat mechanics online ( Cook et al, 2021 ) – can take many forms: verbal, non-verbal (often called behavioral in extant literature; see Cook et al, 2018 ), platform-specific, or more general. For example, while flaming (extensive use of profanity and/or personal insults) and spamming (repeatedly sending the same message non-stop) can occur on both social media platforms and in games using chat functionalities, stealing someone’s kill bonus or blocking the movement of another person’s avatar is only possible in certain types of games (see Kowert and Cook, 2022 for a more complete list of trolling behaviors in games).…”