Through a futuristic lens, how can America progress towards combatting cancel culture on social media amongst public figures and their audiences?

With a 2019 Pew Research report revealing 72% of U.S. adults use at least one social media platform, more than 50% of users frequent popular social media platforms daily, and a 2018 MIT study finding that rumours spread quicker than factual news on Twitter due to being 70% more likely to be retweeted than true information, there is rampant concern about America’s cancel culture among influencers, which according to Aja Romano, Internet Culture Reporter at Vox Media, occurs when a public figure does or says something offensive, igniting the collective boycott of the person, leading to terminating careers and/or social influence. Although Betsy Kunstel, Director of Advising and Retention at Ohio University believes cancel culture is a trend (Bennett), cancelled individuals’ reputation can be permanently tarnished like when an SNL episode from 2000 where Jimmy Fallon impersonates Chris Rock in blackface resurfaced and led to Twitter users accusing Fallon of racism (Nakkab). Shawn Domgaard, Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University, argues “If somebody says something in 2008 but doesn’t say anything until now, then that’s different than if I said something multiple times every year, on the same subject, with the same opinion until now” (Franklin). If public figures continue to act discriminatory they should face repercussions, but cancellation is also counterproductive as it inhibits real shame since celebrities often never concede in order to maintain high-level status, explains B.D. McClay, senior editor of The Hedgehog Review, a journal published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Additionally, Raymond Tran, undergraduate at the University of California San Diego, claims that cancel culture is ineffective due to punishments that do not align with the severity of the original action since people irrationally choose whom to focus on. Additionally, creators are considered exempt from morally acceptable standards due to the amusement gained from audiences despising them, and Oluwasijuola Oshin, undergraduate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, believes celebrities are left with unscathed careers, and should be held more accountable for their actions as inherently role models. Catherine Moffet, undergraduate at Saint Joseph’s University, explains how cancel culture unjustly treats all celebrities the same, regardless of action taken to remedy the situation, like a heartfelt apology or withdrawal from the public eye to reflect and learn. With 67% of U.S. adults perceiving cancel culture to be a serious problem according to a survey conducted by YouGov and HuffPost (Robillard), we must draw a line between awareness and humiliation and explore potential methods of “canceling” social media cancel culture by discussing what our nation refuses to tolerate rather than attacking a single individual for their actions.

Cancel culture empowers people to make an informed decision regarding the continuation of their support for an influencer based on their actions, but cancelling public figures can pose negative mental health consequences including desolation, self-harm, depression, and suicide (Davy). When cancellation inevitably transitions into cyberbullying, both sides can have lasting mental health damage, as a UK study reported 9% of cyberbully victims and 29% of cyberbullies showed signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Marples). Andrew Chase, undergraduate at Keene State College, acknowledges cancel culture’s ability to prevent influencers who have repeatedly committed illegal acts from having a platform and career, like when Robert Sylvester Kelly was canceled and arrested for federal sex crimes, but it is unjust when one’s name or career is maliciously slandered over a belief, or when individuals are accused without context, like when comedian Kevin Hart was canceled for years-old tweets joking about homophobia when they had been deemed acceptable years ago.

Brooke Kato, New York Post writer, explains how cancel culture has presented an opportunity for women and minorities to speak up on social justice issues, like sexual harassment and black rights. Olivia Goldhill, Quartz science reporter, explained, “Where inept courts and HR departments have failed, a new tactic has succeeded: Women talking about harassment on social media, fueling public condemnation that’s forced men from their jobs and destroyed their reputations.” By October 2018, the end of the first year of #MeToo, 429 people faced 1,700 allegations of sexual misconduct with 201 losing their jobs due to allegations spread via social media (Audrey). Without cancel culture, predators like film producer Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act, would persist undiscovered. Albeit social media allows people to demand justice, “People don’t understand that [social activist] organizing isn’t cussing people out,” Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter notes (Solomon), and former President Barack Obama agrees, affirming cancel culture is “not activism” at the 2019 Obama Foundation Summit. Author and Digital Strategist Maisha Johnson offers “Addressing harmful behavior is important, but so is understanding that everyone is on a different step of their journey, so we all make mistakes. And we all have different strengths — so if someone’s lacking in one area, like knowing vocabulary words, we can help them grow in that area, and hope others would help us in the areas we need to grow, too.”

Although most social media platforms have established user rules and flagging options that prohibit hate speech, enforcing these rules requires an increasing amount of manual labor, so machine learning can be employed to automate the detection of hateful comments and allocate human moderators to posts requiring speculation (MacAvaney). Keyword-based approaches use a dictionary of derogatory terms to quickly detect hateful keywords but struggle identifying hate outside those terms and may include terms that are not hateful in a certain context (Saleem). Source metadata can lead to an optimal identification approach, however, this information is often unavailable as publishing data with sensitive user information raises privacy issues on social media platforms. Additionally, models could be biased towards flagging content by certain users or groups as hate speech, while missing posts from users who rarely post hateful content. One limitation of these approaches are the disagreements in defining hate speech which provides challenges for machine learning detection systems, leading to datasets capturing inconsistent information. Another persisting battle is that ill-intentioned individuals try to circumvent detection by, for instance, posting images containing hateful speech, rather than text. Although there is concern regarding limited freedom of speech by flagging hateful posts, the American Bar Association asserts that in the U.S., hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, but not if it incites violence, therefore it is not subverting for social media platforms to enforce rules for perilous content, like when Twitter suspended President Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election, which led to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 (Sullivan). Although Congressman Glenn Grothman announced in a press release, “To ban someone from social media platforms is to deny them the ability to share their ideas,” being cancelled on social media can yield its own negative returns on an influencer, like when retailers including Kohl’s and Wayfair stopped carrying MyPilllow products, citing the brand’s poor performance after being cancelled when a “FightForTrump’’ discount code was accepted on MyPillow’s website and retweeted on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Twitter account on January 6, 2021, causing Lindell’s Twitter ban (Maheshwari).
Collectively, the toxicity of cancel culture can be eliminated through small acts like posting a positive comment or reporting a bullying situation. David Von Drehle, Washington Post columnist, emphasizes that public figures can learn and expand their thinking through comprehending both sides of an issue before taking a position, rather than adhering to cancel culture’s cultivation of one-sided opinions. Cancel culture unjustly punishes individuals without fair trial, and violates the right to free speech without fearing retribution (Becker), and discounts influencers’ ability to learn, change, and grow. Media attention should be given to discrimination impacting communities, rather than petty incidents affecting a few. Instead of dwelling on past mistakes, influencers’ past mistakes should be forgiven and forgotten, and punishments equated with the severity of the action.

Works Cited

Audrey Carlsen, et al., “#MeToo Brought Down 201 Powerful Men. Nearly Half of Their Replacements Are Women.,” nytimes.com, Oct. 29, 2018.

“Barack Obama Takes on ‘Woke’ Call-Out Culture: ‘That’s Not Activism.’” The Guardian, 30 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM.

Becker, Luca. “I Call Foul Play: Cancel Culture Is Counterproductive to the Justice Movement.” The Daily Free Press, Boston University, 19 Feb. 2021, dailyfreepress.com/2021/02/19/i-call-foul-play-cancel-culture-is-counterproductive-to-the-justice-movement.

Bennett, Kayla. “Cancel culture continues to garner controversial opinions.” UWIRE Text, 22 Nov. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A642518289/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=69a58f93.

“Cancel Culture.” UWIRE Text, 19 Oct. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A638821987/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=c5b2085c.

Chase, Andrew. “It’s Time to Cancel Cancel Culture.” UWIRE Text, 25 Mar. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A618515534/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=6ef4df95.

Davy, Victoria. “Canceling cancel culture.” UWIRE Text, 4 June 2019, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A587671212/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=37df8704.

Dizikes, Peter. “Study: On Twitter, False News Travels Faster than True Stories.” MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 8 Mar. 2018, news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308.

Franklin, Joey. “OPINION: Cancel culture’s hidden benefits.” UWIRE Text, 29 Sept. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A636811062/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=6f72e90e.

Goldhill, Olivia. “Naming Abusers Online May Be ‘Mob Justice’ but It’s Still Justice.” Quartz, 7 Nov. 2017, qz.com/1120212/naming-abusers-online-may-be-mob-justice-but-its-still-justice/.

“GROTHMAN: STOP THE CANCEL CULTURE.” States News Service, 13 Jan. 2021, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A648179868/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=fff4467e.

“Hate Speech.” Legal Fact Check, American Bar Association, 17 Aug. 2017, abalegalfactcheck.com/articles/hate-speech.html.

Horowitz, Hannah. “OPINION: Cancel culture is toxic and does more harm than good.” UWIRE Text, 24 Jan. 2021, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649633540/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=c3d514b3.

“Is cancel culture working?” UWIRE Text, 16 Sept. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635616675/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=f173946e.

Kato, Brooke. “What Is Cancel Culture? Everything to Know about the Toxic Online Trend.” New York Post, 10 Mar. 2021, nypost.com/article/what-is-cancel-culture-breaking-down-the-toxic-online-trend/.

MacAvaney S, Yao H-R, Yang E, Russell K, Goharian N, Frieder O (2019) Hate speech detection: Challenges and solutions. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0221152. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0221152

Maheshwari, Sapna, and Tiffany Hsu. “Boss’s Views Put Pressure On MyPillow.” New York Times, 28 Jan. 2021, p. B1(L). Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649835963/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=788ad470.

Marples, Megan. “Some Cyberbullies Show Signs of PTSD, According to a UK Study.” CNN, 24 June 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/health/cyberbullying-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-wellness/index.html.

McClay, B.D. “Cancel.” The Hedgehog Review. Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, hedgehogreview.com/issues/america-on-the-brink/articles/cancel.

Nakkab, Renee. “It’s Time to Cancel Cancel Culture.” The Justice, Brandeis University, 13 Oct. 2020, www.thejustice.org/article/2020/10/its-time-to-cancel-cancel-culture.

Orion Rummler, “Global #MeToo Movement Has Resulted in 7 Convictions, 5 Charges of Influential Figures,” axios.com, July 3, 2020.

Oshin, Oluwasijuola. “The Quick Turnaround of Celebrity Cancel Culture.” The Retriever, U of Maryland, Baltimore County, 4 Sept. 2020, retriever.umbc.edu/2020/09/cancel-culture-isnt-toxic-because-it-doesnt-exist/.

ProCon.org, “Is Cancel Culture (or “Callout Culture”) Good for Society?” ProCon.org. 5 Aug. 2020, www.procon.org/headlines/is-cancel-culture-or-callout-culture-good-for-society/

“Re-branding the social norm.” UWIRE Text, 29 Oct. 2020, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A640323137/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=81bcb427.

Riley Griffin, Hannah Recht and Jeff Green, “#MeToo: One Year Later,” bloomberg.com, Oct. 5, 2018

Robillard, Kevin, and Ariel Edwards-Levy. “Only Half of Americans Have Heard of ‘Cancel Culture.’” HuffPost, 16 Feb. 2021, www.huffpost.com/entry/half-americans-heard-cancel-culture-poll_n_602ae40ac5b6f88289fdcf7a.

Romano, Aja. “Why We Can’t Stop Fighting about Cancel Culture.” Vox, 25 Aug. 2020, www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate.

Saleem, Haji & Dillon, Kelly & Benesch, Susan & Ruths, Derek. (2016). A Web of Hate: Tackling Hateful Speech in Online Social Spaces.

“SAVE AMERICA FROM CANCEL CULTURE.” States News Service, 13 July 2020, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A629384627/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=3b6637b4.

Social Media Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/.

Solomon, Akiba, and Kenrya Rankin. How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance. PublicAffairs, 2019. Barnes and Noble, PublicAffairs, www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-we-fight-white-supremacy-akiba-solomon/1128997300.

Sullivan, Margaret. “Being held to account isn’t ‘cancel culture.’” Washington Post, 31 Jan. 2021. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650219127/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=8ec8f6ee.

Tran, Raymond. “Canceling Cancel Culture.” The Guardian, U of California, San Diego, 6 Dec. 2020, ucsdguardian.org/2020/12/06/canceling-cancel-culture/.

Von Drehle, David. “Don’t be afraid of cancel culture.” Washington Post, 21 July 2020. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630110523/AONE?u=lom_troyhs&sid=AONE&xid=d3b2a8b3.