UNDERSTANDING DYANMICS OF ONLINE CONVERSATIONS: CANCEL CULTURE IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The rise of cancel culture has created an unforgiving environment on social media as users continually push heated social issues into categories of right and wrong, shaming perpetrators for their unacceptable behaviour. Scholars have, thus, described cancel culture as extreme, irrational, malicious, and restrictive of the freedom of expression online. To delve into the dynamics of the cancel culture behaviours, this study how a collective consciousness influences cancelling actions through the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Virtual Collective Consciousness theory. Indepth interviews with 17 participants were carried out to examine the relationship between individual motivations and the group influences afforded by social media platforms to influence cancelling behaviours. Five main motivations were found — topic saliency, perceived intensity of harm, personal experience, possibility of change, and lack of trust in authorities. These factors were indirectly motivated by argument quality, intent and reputation of the person with inappropriate behaviour, individual time and emotions and the perceived impact of cancelling on the self. Findings revealed that social media users exhibited stronger intention to cancel if they shared beliefs with the online mob but, at the same time, would not be pressured to conform if they held different views despite the homogeneity, spontaneity, and synchronicity of social media. The study concluded that the cancelling behaviour is a deliberate and informed decision that one makes and proposed a framework to explain the individual cognitive processing involved in cancelling someone on social media.