Reference no: EM133417158

Case Study: While cancel culture has become a social media buzzword, scholarly understanding of this phenomenon is still at its nascent stage. To contribute to a more nuanced understanding of cancel culture, this study uses a sequential exploratory mixedmethods approach by starting with in-depth interviews with social media users (n=20) followed by a national online survey (n=786) in Singapore. Through the interviews, we found that our participants understand cancel culture as more than just a mob engaged in public shaming on social media; it also involves perceptions of power imbalance and social justice. Building on these perspectives from our interviews, we tested the framework of theory of planned behavior in predicting intention to engage in cancel culture and expanded it by examining the effects of people's belief in a just world using an online national survey in Singapore. The analysis showed that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were positively related to intention to engage in cancel culture, while general belief in a just world was a negative predictor.

Introduction

Social media influencer Xiaxue made headlines in Singapore in 2020 after hundreds of social media users condemned a few tweets she had posted that linked Indian migrant workers to cases of molestation. Originally posted in 2010, the resurfaced tweets triggered outrage, with social media users condemning her "racist remarks," and the hashtag #PunishXiaxue trended on social media (Tan, 2020). Xiaxue later responded through an Instagram video titled #CancelCancelCulture, speaking up against cancel culture and associating it with a dangerous "woke mob" that infringes on people's freedoms (Zhang and Laiu, 2020). In China, several high-profile actors have also been canceled, including popular actor Zhang Zhehan who was banished from the Chinese media in 2021 after old photos of him supposedly visiting a controversial shrine in Japan surfaced-the shrine honors Japanese military officers who had invaded China during World War II. Social media users condemned him; soon, his dramas were either taken down or his name and images were erased (Lee and Aw, 2021). Some trace the origin of the term "cancel culture" to an American film in 1991, where a character breaking up with his girlfriend expressed wanting to "cancel" her; the term was subsequently used in a few songs and cable TV shows, before gaining popularity among African American Twitter users who initially used the term jokingly in 2015 (Romano, 2020). Since then, its usage has evolved, being invoked in more serious contexts, such as in calling out, hating and shaming individuals for racist remarks (Bouvier, 2020; Bouvier and Machin, 2021). Thus, canceling also has roots in activism, originally intending to highlight the wrongdoings of those in power and to combat social injustice (Romano, 2020). But others also criticize cancel culture as stifling freedom of expression (Clark, 2020). Others also argued that while some present canceling as aimed at doing something good, it may also end up maintaining the social problems it targets, such as structural racism, as canceling may end up focusing on the target individual rather than the action, deflecting attention away from the problem or misrepresenting the issue (Bouvier, 2020; Bouvier and Machin, 2021). Given its prevalence in social media, both as a term and as a phenomenon, it is important to examine how social media users understand cancel culture and what motivates them to participate in canceling. Using a socio-psychological approach and focusing on the context of Singapore, a small nation with high levels of social media use (Tandoc, 2021), this study seeks to contribute to expanding knowledge about cancel culture. We employ an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach to answer questions that "cannot be answered by quantitative or qualitative methods alone" (Doyle et al., 2009: 178). This involves starting with a qualitative approach (Phase 1) to explore a phenomenon followed by a quantitative approach (Phase 2) to examine broader patterns based on the initial qualitative findings (Creswell and Piano Clark, 2011). Thus, we first conducted a series of in-depth interviews with social media users who have called out Xiaxue. Next, we conducted a national online survey to examine factors that lead social media users to engage in canceling.

Question: Explain why it is important to examine the cancel culture by using social science research methods, rather than using personal experiences.