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Has "cancel culture" made the social media world better or worst?

1. What is "cancel culture?"

2. How has it affected social media in a bad way?

3. How has it affected social media in a good way?

4. When and why do we cancel people?

5. When do we know when cancel culture goes too much?

6. Why are people so brave for calling people out? Is it because of anonymity?

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https://www.proquest.com/docview/2583305928/A1E62BA9F73D4ADAPQ/40?accountid=205537

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Explore millions of resources from scholarly journals, books, newspapers, videos and more, on the ProQuest Platform.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0957926520977215

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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3671026

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29 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2020 Last revised: 21 Aug 2021

Date Written: August 3, 2020

Abstract

Recent years have seen extensive debate in popular commentary about a pervasive 'cancel culture' thought to be taking over college campuses. A progressive orthodoxy, it is argued, has silenced conservative voices and diverse perspectives. This development, it is claimed, has ostracized contrarians, limited academic freedom, strengthened conformism, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate. But does systematic empirical evidence support these claims? After reviewing the arguments, Part II of this study outline several propositions arising from the cancel culture thesis and describes the sources of empirical survey evidence and measures used to test these claims within the discipline of political science. Data is derived from a new global survey, the World of Political Science, 2019, with 2,446 responses collected from scholars studying or working in 102 countries. Part III presents the results. Part IV summarizes the key findings and considers their broader implications. Overall the study confirms the significant impact of Left-Right ideology on reported experience of the cancel culture in political science - but important contrasts were found in post-industrial and developing societies.

Update: Expanded paper Pippa Norris "Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?" now published here:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323217211037023

Political Studies August 2021.

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closed minds? is a ‘cancel culture’ stifling academic freedom and intellectual debate in political science?

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Closed Minds? Is a 'Cancel Culture' Stifling Academic Freedom and Intellectual Debate in Political Science?

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29 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2020 Last revised: 21 Aug 2021 Date Written: August 3, 2020 Recent years have seen extensive debate in popular commentary about a pervasive 'cancel culture' thought to be taking over college campuses. A progressive orthodoxy, it is argued, has silenced conservative voices and diverse perspectives.

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https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=7&sid=5557c8fe-f39d-48e8-8cb1-eb812d81ccda%40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNzbyZzaXRlPWVkcy1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#AN=141800411&db=crh

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What Propels Cancel Culture? Human nature may lead people to magnify moral ...: Inspire Databases

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2057047320961562

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The term "cancel culture" has significant implications for defining discourses of digital and social media activism. In this essay, I briefly interrogate the evolution of digital accountability praxis as performed by Black Twitter, a meta-network of culturally linked communities online. I trace the practice of the social media callout from its roots in Black vernacular tradition to its misappropriation in the digital age by social elites, arguing that the application of useful anger by minoritized people and groups has been effectively harnessed in social media spaces as a strategy for networked framing of extant social problems. This strategy is challenged, however, by the dominant culture's ability to narrativize the process of being "canceled" as a moral panic with the potential to upset the concept of a limited public sphere.

In July 2020, Harper's Magazine published "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" signed more than 150 notable public figures who aligned to speak out against the development of "a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity," or more colloquially put, the threat of "cancel culture." While limited in scope, I use this essay to briefly map an etymological examination of "canceling" as digital discursive accountability praxis, from its origins in Black oral tradition to its misappropriation by social elites. I begin with a definition of what it means to be "canceled" by contextualizing the power relations that inform the assumption of an equitable public sphere. I then call on digital intersectionality theory to explicate the roots of Black digital discursive practice. Finally, I argue that while social media callouts are a form of networked framing ( Meraz & Papacharissi, 2013), they have been effectively and tellingly counter-framed through application of the reductive and malignant label "cancel culture."

Called out, called in, canceled

Jonah Engel Bromwich, a style writer for the New York Times described the digital phenomenon of being canceled as "total disinvestment in something (anything)" (2018, npa). As I explained to him, "canceling" is an expression of agency, a choice to withdraw one's attention from someone or something whose values, (in)action, or speech are so offensive, one no longer wishes to grace them with their presence, time, and money. The term has since devolved into journalistic shorthand wielded as a tool for silencing marginalized people who have adapted earlier resistance strategies for effectiveness in the digital space.

"Cancel culture" is situated within the Habermasean concept of the public sphere which assumes public discourse is the realm of the elites ( 1962). Earlier examples of discursive accountability practices, including reading, dragging, calling out, in and even canceling, are the creations of Black counterpublics that are conspicuously absent from the American public imaginary, which holds a lofty vision of newspaper op-ed pages, radio shows, town-hall meetings, and the like as forums of debate where a multiplicity of discursive publics are equally empowered to engage in debate and the free expression of ideas. This simply isn't so.

For instance, canceling's analog antecedents-blacklisting and boycotting-are also mediated processes, though limited both in scope and effectiveness by factors of structural power, time, and access to resources. Producers and casting directors, for example, have the ability to categorically deny employment in the entertainment industry. Admissions officers, regents, and donors have enjoyed similar influence on college campuses. Even the measured success of Civil Rights era boycotts depended on global media attention to gain traction. Thus, any examination of so-called "cancel culture" must begin with an analysis of the power relations by which it is defined. Only a perspective that prioritizes the communication histories and practices of disempowered people can adequately decipher the phrase's use as a tool to delegitimize the dissension that echoes from society's margins.

Canceling a person, place, or thing is socially mediated phenomena with origins in queer communities of color. Black Twitter-the meta-network of culturally connected communities on the microblogging site ( Clark, 2015)-made the language of being "canceled" into an internet meme ( Shifman, 2013). The reference was subsequently seized upon by outside observers, particularly journalists with an outsized ability to amplify the(ir own) white gaze. Politicians, pundits, celebrities, academics, and everyday people alike have narrativized being canceled into a moral panic akin to actual harm, adding a neologic twist on the origin of the practice by associating it with an unfounded fear of censorship and silencing. But being canceled-a designation, it should be noted, usually reserved for celebrities, brands, and otherwise out-of-reach figures-should be read as a last-ditch appeal for justice.

"Originally a practice of Black women 'signifyin,' [the callout] has occasionally been mistaken for Twitter's 'mob mentality,' but it is qualitatively different: it is often a critique of systemic inequality rather than an attack against specific, individualistic transgressions" (Brock, 2020). As venture community management, the callout on social media platforms such as Twitter is a form of activism; feminized labor in the digital economy undertaken voluntarily to protect the particularly vulnerable in online spaces ( Nakamura, 2015). The use of broadcast-style social media platforms, such as Twitter and YouTube, allow marginalized groups to engage in networked framing, a process by which collective experiences of an offending party's (or their proxy's) unjust behavior is discussed, morally evaluated, and prescribed a remedy-such as being fired or choosing to resign-through the collective reasoning of culturally aligned online crowds ( Meraz & Papacharissi, 2013, p. 159).

It may involve reading another individual-giving them a dressing down that uses colorful and descriptive language and an incisive ability to articulate appraisal of another's character. Reading, which begat calling out (which begat canceling), is an "indigenous expressive form" particular to the Other. It has been perfected by Black women like our grandmothers, who let us know what they see, even if they don't directly say it; minors deprived of a sense of agency, who quickly learn how to detect and name adults' ulterior motives; and queer folk whose first line of defense is withering critique ( Johnson, 2011, pp. 434, 437, and 443). While these interactions usually go unnoticed, the clashes between strong and weak publics, particularly on Twitter, expose the conceptual limits of a singular public sphere for the chaotic deliberation required in the development of a truly liberal democracy ( Fraser, 1990, p. 77). Not every critique can come wrapped up in niceties and polite speech. Nor should it. Sometimes, the urgency and weight of oppression require us to immediately cry out.

The idea of "cancel culture," as implied by the letter, is a phenomena uniquely enabled by capitalism's demands on the media production side, and on the audience side, by our connectivity to social media. Social media is a space where journalists-who possess the ability to amplify otherwise unremarkable conversations-have extracted and decontextualized so many rich traditions of Black communicative practice to meet the demand for media content that will draw readers/listeners/viewers' attention, while failing to provide adequate cultural context to explain why these debates are and should be a part of mainstream public discourse. As Tynes et al. (2012) explain in their advancement of digital intersectionality theory: "Countering dominant discourses on social media as conversation is intersectional, multidimensional and less restricted. This enables users to effectively 'talk back' and mobilize around topics outside the view of the mainstream, until they go viral, at which point they gain the desired attention of the [mainstream news] media" (p. 33; emphasis and qualifiers mine).

You gon' learn . . . but we got to teach ya

In 2013, during Black Twitter's summer of accountability, celebrity chef Paula Deen, Juror B37 in the trial of Trayvon Martin's killer, and white feminists everywhere were examples of this back talk when their acts of workplace bigotry, opportunism, and limited commitments to solidarity (respectively) were called out via hashtags and an online petition. Aside from Deen's hostile workplace lawsuit, none of these incidents would have been considered substantive enough to warrant news coverage, but Black Twitter's online activity around each of them triggered news media systems, demanding coverage. Hashtag-driven discussion of these incidents, as well as cases in which ordinary people are caught on tape attempting to police and harass Black folks (#BBQBecky, #PoolPatrolPaula), push the ever-present issue of everyday racism to the top of the news media's agenda. Several of the Harper's letter signatories have been at the center of these processes, where the online discourse of the undifferentiated masses characterizes debate about fitting punishment for people who break with evolving social norms. The rapid mobilization in digital resistance and accountability practice among otherwise disempowered peoples compel us to identify who or what defines the disputed concept of the public sphere, who sets the rules of engagement, and thus what is considered "talking back" to dominant discourses.

James Davison Hunter, a sociologist and author of the 1990s culture wars thesis mapped these contours of power perfectly, declaring that "public discourse is a discourse of elites. That is where you find this conflict at its most incendiary. . . . The power of culture is the power to define reality, the power to frame the debate, and that power resides among the elites." Thus framing these unruly discourses as "cancel culture" has found utility among those who wish to quash any attempts to critique their social position. It evokes the enduring schema of an ongoing battle between those Hunter conceived of as elites-those with advantageous positions in the Matrix of Domination ( Collins, 1990)-and everyone else. Hunter belies the shared belief among those who promote the culture wars thesis as their investment in the limitations of the Habermasean public sphere concept, which privileges the elite class and allows no room for alternative and dissenting public, nor acknowledges relations between powerful and disempowered groups ( Fraser, 1990, p. 77). While Fraser's critique of "actually existing democracy" provides four clear objectives for critically theorizing the public sphere concept that the signatories of the Harper's letter claimed to defend, too much attention is paid to its limitations. I prefer the expansiveness offered by Lorde's theory of "useful anger" as guide to reconciling the uppity, loud, slick, cutting, and unrelenting critique levied as unruly speech ( Olson, 2011):

We are working in a context of oppression and threat, the cause of which is certainly not the angers which lie between us, but rather that virulent hatred leveled against all women, people of Color, lesbians and gay men, poor people against all of us who are seeking to examine the particulars of our lives as we resist our oppressions, moving toward coalition and effective action. ( Lorde, 1984)

Social media allows hundreds of thousands-if not millions-of everyday people to leverage networked collectivity and a sense of immediacy to demand accountability from a range of powerful figures, including individuals-such as Russell Simmons' ill-conceived #HarrietTubmanSexTape; and institutions-such as the universities called out by #ConcernedStudent1950 and #BeingBlackAtMichigan. For so long, the concentric circles of the social elite in arts, media, business, and politics were insulated by the norms of acceptable discourse, distanced from the realities of Others who struggle through life without access to the specific privileges afforded along lines of race, gender, and class. As digital connectivity shrinks those gaps, the demand for new social standards outpaces the willingness of the comfortable to consider just what their professed commitment to the promotion of social equity may actually cost them. Unfortunately, the expansiveness of the internet and its outsize influence on news and entertainment media doesn't bode well for parsing the nuance of such clamorous conversation. The noise of online harassment, doxxing, and bad-faith piling on that has evolved from the callout, the read, and the drag drowns out Black Twitter's approach toward demanding accountability in digital spaces.

The problem with so-called "cancel culture" does not rest with the formerly disempowered, seemingly faceless public that the letter critiques, but with the signatories and their peers, " . . . the institutional leaders," who, "in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms." These self-appointed regents of open debate have failed to anticipate an age in which there is no longer a dominant public sphere, but a fractal sequence of counterspheres and oppositional publics. They have yet to reconcile how coalitions of the Othered are now equipped to execute a responsive strategy for immediately identifying harms and demanding consequences. The absence of deliberation in chastising bad actors, misconstrued as the outcome of cancel culture, is a fault of the elites' inability to adequately conceive of the impact social media connectivity has for shifting the power dynamics of the public sphere in the digital age.

In their attempt to separate Black discursive accountability praxes-calling out, reading, and canceling-from their origins in the creative spaces occupied by the oppressed, and reposition them as a threat to their real and aspirational peers, elite public figures fall victim to their own worst fears: a realization that the social capital they've worked so hard for is hyperinflated currency in the attention economy.

References

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Lorde, A. (1984). Uses of anger: Women responding to racism. In Lorde, A. (Ed.), Sister outsider: Essays & speeches (pp. 124-133). Crossing.
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Author biography

Meredith D. Clark is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of a forthcoming manuscript on Black Twitter. She can be reached on Twitter @meredithdclark.

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DRAG THEM: A brief etymology of so-called "cancel culture" - Meredith D. Clark, 2020

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The term "cancel culture" has significant implications for defining discourses of digital and social media activism. In this essay, I briefly interrogate the evolution of digital accountability praxis as performed by Black Twitter, a meta-network of culturally linked communities online.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211695820300647

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Gwen Bouvier is a Professor at Zhejiang University. Her main areas of research interest are social media, civic discourse, and news representation. Professor Bouvier's publications have focused on multimodal and critical discourse analysis, social media, fashion as discourse and the visual representation of crises in news. She is the Associate Editor for Social Semiotics and Review Editor for the Journal of Multicultural Discourse. Her latest publications include Bouvier, G. (Ed.) (2016). Discourse and Social Media. London: Routledge; Chiluwa, I. and Bouvier, G. (Eds.) (2019). Activism, Campaigning and Political Discourse on Twitter. New York, NY: Nova Science; Bouvier, G., & Machin, D. (2018). Critical Discourse Analysis and the Challenge of Social Media: The Case of News Texts. Review of Communication, 18(3), 178-192 and Bouvier, G. (2019). How journalists source trending social media feeds: A critical discourse perspective on Twitter. Journalism Studies, 20(2), 212-231.

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Racist call-outs and cancel culture on Twitter: The limitations of the platform's ability to define issues of social justice

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Gwen Bouvier is a Professor at Zhejiang University. Her main areas of research interest are social media, civic discourse, and news representation. Professor Bouvier's publications have focused on multimodal and critical discourse analysis, social media, fashion as discourse and the visual representation of crises in news.

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https://courses.bowdoin.edu/sociology-1101-spring-2020/wp-content/uploads/sites/319/2020/05/What-is-cancel-culture_-Why-we-keep-fighting-about-canceling-people.-Vox.pdf

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Counterpoint: Cancel Culture Chills Free Speech and Impairs Dialogue.

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Counterpoint: Cancel Culture Chills Free Speech and Impairs Dialogue.

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https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=5557c8fe-f39d-48e8-8cb1-eb812d81ccda%40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNzbyZzaXRlPWVkcy1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#AN=155233735&db=pwh

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Thesis: Cancel culture has a detrimental effect on free speech and leaves little room for spirited debate, remorse, or reconciliation. Because of the way social media operates, cancellation can easily get out of control and hurt ordinary people.

Online outrage gets out of hand due to the nature of social media itself.

Cancellation stems from a mob mentality that is more interested in punishment than in building consensus.

Cancellation can be a slippery slope; if anyone with an unpopular opinion can be deplatformed or banned, activists and other political dissidents can be as well.

While it is clear that social media has changed the nature of public debate, critics are divided over whether the influence of such platforms is a positive or a negative. Many agree that social media has had a democratizing effect in allowing more people a platform to speak out, but there are also unintended consequences. According to University of Central Florida sociologist Amanda Koontz, one issue is the reductivism of social media. "The instant nature of social media means that very large, complicated social issues get condensed into one sentence, one minute for TikTok [videos] or just a photo on Instagram," Koontz told Nicole Dudenhoefer for Pegasus magazine. She continued, "Everything is becoming very succinct, and it both discourages nuanced discussion and encourages all-or-nothing stances. Cancel culture is 'You're all good, or you're all bad,' and human nature is much more complicated than that." Other critics have pointed out other, less obvious elements that can lead to social media outrage as well. Futurist Amy Webb has described the dopamine surge a person liking a post gets as "the lifeblood of cancel culture." Dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to sensations of pleasure, makes those participating in a social media pile on feel as though they are part of a bigger movement. That can drive engagement and lead to a much bigger mob.

Steven Greenhut, a regional director for the libertarian R Street Institute, argued in an opinion piece for the Orange County Register that cancel culture is a result of a desire to actively hurt those considered "enemies," rather than from a desire to engage in good-faith debate. He cited several instances of online shaming, against both public and "non-public figures," as evidence that cancelation is punitive in nature. In his view, debate must make space for good intentions, apologies, and growth.

Similarly, Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, a nonprofit dedicated to free expression, maintained that the activists that have spoken out against hate and bigotry are themselves protected by free speech but should be wary about demanding punishment for those they seek to cancel. According to Nossel, online social justice movements have led to genuine positive change in the real world, but when institutions begin banning, deplatforming, or denying employment to people who voice unpopular opinions, it is minorities, political dissidents, and other marginalized groups that are most often silenced.

The author has presented the fundamental positions for this perspective in the debate. Outline the strengths and weaknesses of each perspective.

If asked to begin forming an argument for this position, what sources would you need to build your case? What fundamental information do you need? What opinion leaders in this debate would you look to in solidifying your argument?

What are the weakest aspects of the position outlined by the author? How might those weaker arguments help you prepare a counterargument?

What additional Talking Points could you add to support this position?

Bibliography 1 Dudenhoefer, Nicole. "Is Cancel Culture Effective?" Pegasus Magazine, Fall 2020, www.ucf.edu/pegasus/is-cancel-culture-effective/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2021. 2 Greenhut, Steven. "Americans' Lust to 'Cancel' Should Spark Soul Searching." The Orange County Register, 13 Feb. 2021, www.ocregister.com/2021/02/13/americans-lust-to-cancel-should-spark-soul-searching. Accessed 30 Aug. 2021. 3 Nossel, Suzanne. "'Cancel Culture' Censorship Can Be Most Dangerous for Those Who Promote Social Justice." THINK, NBC News, 4 Aug. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cancel-culture-censorship-can-be-most-dangerous-those-who-promote-ncna1235671. Accessed 30 Aug. 2021. 4 Webb, Amy. "Will Cancel Culture Come for Us All?" Interview by Molly Wood. Marketplace Tech, Marketplace, 15 Jan. 2021, www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/will-cancel-culture-come-for-us-all-capitol-attack-trump-accounts-social-media-parler. Accessed 30 Aug. 2021.
Copyright of Points of View: Cancel Culture is the property of Salem Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

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Counterpoint: Cancel Culture Chills Free Speech and Impairs Dialogue

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Thesis: Cancel culture has a detrimental effect on free speech and leaves little room for spirited debate, remorse, or reconciliation. Because of the way social media operates, cancellation can easily get out of control and hurt ordinary people. Online outrage gets out of hand due to the nature of social media itself.

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https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=5557c8fe-f39d-48e8-8cb1-eb812d81ccda%40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNzbyZzaXRlPWVkcy1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#AN=155233733&db=pwh

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Introduction

The term " cancel culture" has come to be used as a catchall phrase to describe the public shaming or ostracism of a person or organization that has said or done something perceived as offensive, disrespectful, or dangerous. It can also be seen as a cultural, economic, or social boycott of the "canceled" subject and their values.

While there are many instances of public shaming throughout human history, the use of social media has changed the dynamic in many ways. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow anyone to speak out, and the algorithms on such sites can boost statements that are incendiary or outraged. That can create a cascade effect that some people liken to an angry mob. Others argue that social media can democratize rhetoric and give people with less power an opportunity to hold those with more power accountable for their words and actions. Debate over this issue has turned fiercely partisan, particularly in the United States. Many conservatives argue that cancel culture amounts to censorship and an attempt to stifle different points of view, while some progressives claim it is a natural and even sometimes beneficial social force. Others question whether cancel culture is even a valid concept or simply a term used to inflame cultural tensions. Regardless, by the 2020s cancel culture had become a central issue in discourse around freedom of expression.

Boycott: A form of nonviolent protest in which protesters refuse to purchase from or engage with companies, organizations, or individuals they find politically or socially unacceptable.

Call out: A public reprimand, either verbal or written, for a mistake or perceived indiscretion, often aimed at a high-profile individual or entity.

Censorship: The suppression of words or images by an authority, often on the grounds that such expressions are dangerous or offensive.

Deplatforming: The act of denying a person a medium through which to communicate their views or beliefs, particularly when they are banned from a website or forum.

Doxxing: The practice of publicizing personal information, such as name, address, or place of employment, about a person whom others perceive as a bad actor.

Moral panic: A widespread fear that an emerging cultural movement or phenomenon is dangerous or threatening, usually based in exaggerated or false information and related to some longstanding societal anxiety.

© EBSCO

Although the term " cancel culture" only emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many civilizations have a long history of punishing people for their words, beliefs, or values. As far back as the fifth century BCE, for example, the Greek city-state of Athens used a system of democratic ostracism. Once per year, every citizen was permitted a vote to banish a single individual from the city for a decade, after which the exiled person could return and reassume their position in society.

The Athenians were far from the only civilization to use shaming, banishment, imprisonment, or even death as a vehicle to silence dissent, though. There are examples of this throughout history, from the Spanish Inquisition, which investigated, tortured, and executed religious heretics from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, to the stocks and scaffolds used to shame dissidents in colonial British North America. Other well-known examples include the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations of public and private American citizens for alleged subversion and ties to Communism between 1938 and 1975, the activities of the Red Guard during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-77), and the work of Stasi informants of East Germany (1950-90). While these historic touchstones vary in terms of reach and power, they are all often cited as examples of the ways freedom of speech can be quelled. Although many of these agencies used explicit violence to rid themselves of opposition, they also regularly demonstrated the power of other tools, such as smear campaigns, employment bans, public humiliations, and other psychological operations.

Some arguments place cancel culture in the tradition of these types of violent censorship, while others have pointed out its similarity to the "political correctness" movement of the 1990s. That phrase was used to refer to the idea that language that offends political identities (particularly identities like race, gender, and sexual orientation) should be avoided. MIT professor emeritus Ruth Perry told NPR that the phrase "politically correct" started out as an in-joke among left-wing academics and activists in the 1980s; according to her, the term was only used ironically among peers. Over time, however, it was picked up by people outside the leftist community, and as it made its way to mainstream media, it produced a moral panic over the perceived erosion of free speech. Conservatives in particular pointed to incidences of campus protest or conflict as examples of conservative speech being silenced, though people on all sides of the political spectrum at times expressed concern that the basic tenets of free speech were under attack.

The use of the word "canceled" to mean "shunned or rejected" has its roots in Black American culture. As with "political correctness," the meaning has changed over time. Initially, the concept of "canceling" was used primarily to refer to romantic or social situations. In what is possibly the first use of the phrase, Nile Rodgers wrote and recorded a song called "Your Love Is Cancelled" in 1981. The phrase came up again in the 1991 film New Jack City in a sexist joke directly inspired by Rodgers's song and then in the rap songs "Hustler's Ambition" and "I'm Single" in 2005 and 2010, respectively. It was not until 2014, however, that the combination of social media and television came together to bring the phrase into mainstream use. That December music producer Cisco Rosado told his girlfriend Diamond Strawberry that she was "canceled" during an argument televised for the reality show Love and Hip-Hop: New York; it not long after that, according to culture writer Aja Romano, that the phrase started to appear regularly among Black users of Twitter in reference to individuals.

Over time, the term "canceled" evolved from a joke or casual dismissal used among peers into a demand for accountability from celebrities and other public figures. In 2014 social media activist Suey Park coined the hashtag #CancelColbert to provoke outrage over a poorly conceived joke about racist naming tweeted from The Colbert Report's corporate account, though it failed to gain much traction. Anne Charity Hudley, a linguist specializing in African American English, has explained that the practice of cancel culture is similar to the Montgomery bus boycott during the civil rights movement, in that individuals from marginalized communities can collectively spark protest against a celebrity or cultural product by refusing to engage with certain words or behavior. In this understanding of the phenomenon, it is a means of working for cultural change, and sometimes economic change, by refusing to support people that spread ideas considered harmful.

Evolving and proliferating social media platforms changed the face of activism throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, for instance, used social media to amplify protests over the disproportionate number of Black Americans being killed in police encounters, starting in 2013 after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen. Likewise, the #MeToo movement took off in late 2017 as victims and survivors of sexual harassment and assault spoke out about their own experiences amid growing allegations of sexual misconduct by high-profile figures such as film producer Harvey Weinstein. Both movements attempted to amplify traditionally unheard voices and to reach wider audiences.

Both movements also sparked backlash from critics. National Football League player Colin Kaepernick, for instance, garnered criticism from conservatives for kneeling during pregame national anthem performances in 2016 in protest against police brutality. Commentators including then president Donald Trump railed against him for the next two years, until Kaepernick was effectively barred from professional football. (Some observers noted the irony that Kaepernick had essentially been "canceled" by anti- cancel culture forces.) The #MeToo movement also faced backlash as some suggested it went too far in damaging people's careers even before allegations of sexual misconduct had been proven, bypassing the due process of law. Some critics further felt the movement chilled normal romantic behavior by making people, especially men, too wary of getting in trouble.

While Black Lives Matter and MeToo are often cited by critics as " cancel culture," the phrase itself only entered into mainstream media and the political lexicon around 2018. Soon it was the center of many debates over the state of freedom of expression. While conservative pundits were among the most fervent to disparage cancellation, positioning it as a major threat to society, commentators on both sides of the political spectrum raised concerns. Former president Barack Obama cautioned against cancel culture, arguing that judgmental callouts on social media were self-serving, in an October 2019 media appearance. President Trump repeatedly railed against it as un-American in 2020 speeches. In July 2020 more than 150 academics and writers published an open letter against cancel culture in Harper's Magazine, seeing it as censorial, conformist, intolerant, and reductive. However, others expressed skepticism that cancel culture was a serious problem, or a problem at all. Supporters continued to argue that it simply represented efforts by marginalized groups to hold those in power accountable; moreover, it was often pointed out that attempts to cancel celebrities or other public figures rarely had a lasting impact. Some observers objected to the term " cancel culture" altogether, suggesting that normal societal processes had been lumped together and amplified by conservatives seeking to gain an edge in the culture wars.

Nevertheless, by the 2020s cancel culture had settled in as a significant cultural feature and topic of debate. A Pew Research Center poll in September 2020 found that at least 44 percent of Americans were aware of the term, and men and college-educated people were more familiar with it than women and those with only a high school education. Nearly six in ten respondents thought social media callouts could be effective for accountability, but analysts found notable partisan differences in how the term was used or conceived of. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to agree that calling people out on social media for posting offensive content holds them to account. On the other hand, conservative respondents thought such actions tend to punish people undeservedly. With social media a firmly established part of daily life, debate continues about how to balance freedom of expression with accountability and sensitivity.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

Jennifer Graham earned a BA from Reed College and an MFA in writing from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a longtime teacher, instructional designer, and writer who has taught rhetoric, critical thinking, and cultural literacy.
Bibliography 2 McGrady, Clyde. "The Strange Journey of 'Cancel,' from a Black-Culture Punchline to a White-Grievance Watchword." The Washington Post, 2 April 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cancel-culture-background-black-culture-white-grievance/2021/04/01/2e42e4fe-8b24-11eb-aff6-4f720ca2d479%5fstory.html. Accessed 10 Aug. 2021. 6 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. Accessed 10 Aug. 2021. 7 Shapiro, Ari. "How Cancel Culture Became Politicized-Just Like Political Correctness." All Things Considered, edited and produced by Mia Venkat, et al., NPR, 26 July 2021, www.npr.org/transcripts/1014744289. Accessed 10 Aug. 2021.
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By Jennifer Graham

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Introduction The term " cancel culture" has come to be used as a catchall phrase to describe the public shaming or ostracism of a person or organization that has said or done something perceived as offensive, disrespectful, or dangerous. It can also be seen as a cultural, economic, or social boycott of the "canceled" subject and their values.

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