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This page highlights findings from a review of current literature about cancel culture throughout social media. The following study draws on previous findings in the fields of media and communication in order to further explain what cancel culture is, how it has suddenly become a common trend among society, as well as how it has impacted those caught in controversy.
What is Cancel Culture?
In recent years the term "Cancel Culure" has been making its rounds throughout society. Cancel culture refers to the phenomenon of canceling someone out of society. The act of canceling is usually done when someone is against ones values. What started as a term on, what is now known as, “Black Twitter”, “Cancel Culture” has made a pivotal role in political culture. Hashtags regarding social justice movements have grown in popularity, gaining more attention towards specific topics, like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter (Bouvier & Machin, 2021). Cancel Culture is allowing people to cancel out and disregard opposing beliefs while only focusing on their own (Greesnspan, 2020). With all of the debate, it is causing much more conflicts within society. As views become stronger, people are becoming much more intense with their actions and words.
What happens on Social Media tends to stay on social media.
What happens on Social Media tends to stay on social media.
Social media has become a key player when it comes to cancel culture. People from all over the world use social media, so it is one of the easiest ways to gain people's attention about certain topics and discussions. However, everyone around the world uses social media so differently that it can be hard to tell whether those people are being genuine or not (Ng, 2020).
Social media has become a gatekepper to online hate and it has become very common for people to take old information and twist it into a relevant controversy. Cancel culture has shown how information can get spiraled through social media and form various outcomes. This often leads to misinformation, causing people to lose their trust in many online sources (Marwick & Lewis, 2017).
What should people look out for on social media?
What should people look out for on social media?
Bad Actors
People who tend to misuse social media and abuse their power are known as "bad actors". There are different types of bad actors on each social media platform that have different motives. Many of these people are only putting out information for attention so it is important to be aware of their presence and back up any information that is recieved.
Fake News
Similar to propaganda, fake news is is rooted in ideological beliefs. It is often information meant to be misleading, put out in the world with damaging effects on the repuations of people or for the purpose of making a profit.
Anyone has the ability to be Affected by the consequences of cancel culture.
Anyone has the ability to be Affected by the consequences of cancel culture.
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Any piece of information has the ability to go viral in the media, having lasting effects on people whether they have a platform or not. While most stories people hear revolve around celebrities, not many people hear the stories of those who have less of a role in society. There is a great difference in the intensity of the backlash everyday people recieve compared to celebrites, however, people are less likely to realize this as the after affects are not in the spotlight. It is much easier for a celebrity caught in cancel culture controvery to change the narrative or speak out about different topics.
"Cancel culture is so often ill-defined that it can range from the desire to cancel those who have committed sexual assault to those who critique unequal power structures in society" (Kannen, 2020, p. 269-270).
News Sources are Seeking the Public's attention.
News Sources are Seeking the Public's attention.
The most common place that people get their news nowadays now is online. No more waiting for information being delivered right to the door. With social media it is much easier for news to spread. This has caused competition between various new sources in drawing people into their content. The main goal when putting out news is to make it seem desirable to the reader. Journalists have learned to frame their content in certain ways in order to gain specific audiences (Valenzuela et al. 2017).
“People are not hooked on YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook but on each other” (Valenzula et al. , 2017, p. 805).
What are some of the different types of media framing?
Conflict Frame
Increases the perceived seriousness and news value of an event. Framing news based on economic impact is typically used in hard news such as newspapers.
Morality Frame
Will put an event or issue in the context of values, moral prescriptions, normative messages, and religious or cultural tenets.
Algorithms allow people to see what they want to see.
Algorithms allow people to see what they want to see.
Algorithms grant people information that will interest them the most by taking their past searches and activity and providing similar content. People select or discard based on certain words or hashtags within a post, filtering out perspectives that they are more likely against (Aruguete & Calvo, 2018). This has since caused divides within society, as people are blinded to the opposing side of their beliefs and can't necessarily back up any debates. If people are only seeing what they want to see, they will never be able to learn and understand what is going on around them and feel as though what they see is always right.
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What Determines How People Will React to Content Within Cancel Culture?
Past research has shown the ways cancel culture spreads as well as the effects to those who are canceled. However, with discussions on these various areas of “cancel culture,'' there is little that has been discussed as to the feelings of those witnessing the canceling of others.
As explained by Clark (2020), there are many people that simply want to hop onto current trends, simply for entertainment and attention. By getting into the minds of those who are seeing the process of “cancel culture”, there is a lot to say in regards to their motives on why they let it happen. More analysis on this area of cancel culture may help determine why it has risen in popularity over the past few years.
RQ1: Are social media users more likely to ignore the discussions within “cancel culture” or express their opinions by reacting in the conflicts through social media posts?
RQ2: What factors of controversial actions lead people to react to discussions within cancel culture on social media?
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