THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION : PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ONLINE SHAME AND CANCEL CULTURE

Description

Social media has precipitated an essential departure from locally situated methods of social denouncement towards processes of digital shame, as a globalised, persistent and clearly visible form of public liability. Although online shame and cancel culture may indeed be helpful in their own right; highlighting misbehaviour, offering platforms to previously silenced voices and exposing powerful institutions to their errors but they also may result in a more acute, widespread form of public shaming that has serious effects on our psychology, society and ethics. This chapter examines online practices of shaming and cancel culture, investigating the ancestral foundations of these new world cyber phenomena within the multidisciplinary psychological landscape. The chapter maps out the psychological processes that engender collective shaming online : the enforcement of norms, the importance of social identification, moral rage, the online inhibition effect, and learning via social processes.  The author then investigates the psychological toll of protracted online shame and cancel culture on people’s emotional health, their personal and group identities, and the relationships between them. Their conclusions, which align with other findings in the field, include that longer periods of exposure to public condemnation are associated with increases in anxiety, depression, guilt, social avoidance, disturbance of identity, suicide, disruption of personal relationships and workplace interactions, and with harm to public discourse. It concludes by weighing the ethical costs of punishment and liability and proposing ways of cultivating a more fair and humane online world, including better digital skills and literacies, better control of online forums, the reform of cyber- law and the development of psychological tools.