Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cancel Culture: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Social Media Practice Of Canceling, Samantha Haskell

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Unlike previous forms of public shaming, canceling is a product of Web 2.0 and the boom of social media. The act of canceling is inherently tied to the word “canceled,” however, how the public defines a cancellation is not static. Instead, how those on social media partake and understand canceling is due to consistent strategies that emerge during a cancellation. In this research, I conducted a case study of the cancellation of Kevin Spacey that took place in 2017. Over 1700 tweets discussing Kevin Spacey’s cancellation were captured in order to determine the process of canceling. Through qualitative content analysis, …