Cancelation and media gramar

Elective affinity?

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze cancellations as a practice undertaken by segments of digital activism aiming to silence critics through their stigmatization and conversion into adversaries. It is based on accusations aimed at garnering collective support for a moral crusade carried out via social media to publicly humiliate and destroy the reputation of its target. Drawing on interconnected sources from digital sociology and studies on the moralization of politics, the text identifies and explores the affinities between cancelation crusades and identity-centered media grammar. It concludes that such political practice has become hegemonic within what Nancy Fraser terms “progressive neoliberalism.”