Is ‘cancel culture’ a new phenomenon?
Katy Wareham Morris, a Senior Lecturer in Media & Film Studies and Head of Department for English, Media and Culture in the Institute of Arts and Humanities discusses whether 'cancel culture' is a new phenomenon.
Whether you’re a social media content creator or a digital dinosaur, ‘cancel culture’ is a term that most of us are familiar with. It has hit the headlines in recent years, with some high profile celebrity and political examples of people being ‘cancelled’, largely through social media. But is it really as new a phenomenon as its use in such modern platforms would have us believe?
Not so for Katy Wareham Morris, a Senior Lecturer in Media & Film Studies, who specialises in cultural values, attitudes and beliefs and their representation in the media. She believes that the kinds of behaviours people used to show in the past are still happening today - instead now they are online and in different spaces; it may look 'new' but the behaviours and the values that inform them are age-old.
Part of our culture
Although Wareham Morris acknowledges social media as a clear driving force behind the cancel culture of today, she said that the concept of cancelling people has existed far longer than the advent of such technologies.
“That phrase ‘cancel culture’ is a relatively new soundbite,” she said. “But the sentiment has existed in various different ways and in different forms throughout history and it's largely linked to moral scapegoating and moral panics.”
Wareham Morris identifies it as something clearly recognisable in various historical periods. She draws parallels with the witch trials of the 16th to 18th centuries, when women were accused, tried and often executed as suspected witches.
“There are a lot of parallels between moral panics and cancel culture and this social media activity,” she said. “People look for moral scapegoats.
“For example, you could also trace it back to the 1960s and 70s where people were afraid of 'youth' subcultures such as the punks. People need someone to blame for particular social or cultural issues and problems, and the media often construct representations of groups, communities and identities which help to build a story, a narrative connected to these representations which 'frame' these groups as responsible for these problems.
“The media are very good at building an 'us versus them' story; a good versus evil narrative that people can get behind. It's a simple, familiar structure that people understand. Often political groups will utilise the media to help build this type of story. It then diverts our attention away from their short-comings or failures.”
The evolution of a cancel culture
Wareham Morris said that the cancel culture as it looks now has evolved over time. “It's changed slightly because the nature and economic structure of the media has been radically changed due to the internet and, as a result, the boom in social media,” she said. “But prior to that, other forms of media were always being used.”
“When we talk about media, the original use of the word 'media' is about communication technology, and history shows that these technologies revolutionise human behaviour,” added Wareham Morris. “The first technology was the written word. Before that, we had oral storytelling cultures.”
She added: "And then technology advanced again with the printing press: stories were written down and people became more literate; these stories were distributed more widely beyond immediate communities. So the media has always been involved in various different ways with the construction of cultural mythologies and storytelling.
“Just because we think of the media today as existing through the internet and through social media, we forget that this is not a new thing. These are patterns that have happened before.”
Pre-social media incidents
Wareham Morris highlights high profile cases pre-social media and the explosion of internet cultures in the 1990s, where celebrities were effectively ‘cancelled’, such as David Beckham after he was sent off in England’s World Cup defeat to Argentina in 1998. News media at the time had up until then painted him as a national hero and England’s latest promising star. But he became a target for public anger, labelled by some tabloid news media as responsible for the nation’s exit from the World Cup, and received abuse as a result.
“There was a news media backlash against him,” said Wareham Morris. “The media are very quick to create scapegoats. It's the same as it was then, it's just on different media platforms now. People do appear to be even more emotionally invested now and this is because social media communication is so immediate and, the research shows us that people are less inhibited online. People have a greater, stronger voice than they did with the print media because of how social media works - people do not have to wait for a letter to the paper for their voice or opinion to be heard; their reactions to a news story are instant. We're also encouraged to use social media as a platform for free speech.”
Same tactics, different medium
So how do the tactics of the media back, for example, in the 1990s used to attract readers to the newsstands compare with today’s media and their methods to keep people glued to their phones? They remain remarkably similar, according to Wareham Morris.
“Just as there was a competition to sell the most newspapers, there is now a competition for people’s attention online. The media's tactic to create and represent stereotypical angels and villains hasn't changed much,” she said. “Someone who's the nation's sweetheart one week could be the devil the week after. The tactics of sensationalism are very similar: now we call it clickbait. A frenzy about someone can be whipped up in a couple of hours. The more people engage with this story - comment, share, turn into memes - the more money the media organisations make”.
However, Wareham Morris said that the tactics have become more extreme over time. “The internet democratised the media in certain ways so people could create their own content, including websites very quickly. With the birth of the internet, we moved away from a 'top-down' model of media organisations and their power to a much more horizontal model. Now consumers of the media could also be producers of it, especially once we had the birth of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s.
“This meant that 'news' could be created and distributed by everyday people not just qualified journalists. And, because of the competition for online attention, debates are often simplified and sensationalised because media organisations know that this will likely attract people to read their story.” she added. “The current media economic business model does not work around complexity and nuance. It works on sensationalism and clickbait. There's a fight for eyeballs, especially online. Arguing on social media keeps people on their platform for longer. The longer you're on their platform, the more money they're making.”
Lack of complexity or nuance
For Wareham Morris, this lack of nuance and complexity to arguments or standpoints that lies at the roots of cancel culture is a concern. She said: “When we see these kinds of polarised debates within the media and where people are very quickly 'cancelled' or silenced, it prevents people from getting all of the factual details, the historical or political context. In addition, people don’t know where to find it and if you didn’t know it was there, why would you go looking for it anyway. People have to have opportunities to express the complexity and nuance of their experiences or opinions and, these should be openly discussed and debated. When we shut down certain voices, this is problematic. The 'news' has a responsibility to be fair and objective in its reporting; it should be accurate and impartial.”
“I think it is important that we develop people's media literacy and get people to think more critically about their own relationship with the media and what they see, read and experience through it. People should know to be sceptical of media representations and know how to fact-check information.”
In summary, though the medium and speed of delivery has evolved, the tactics used don’t appear to have fundamentally changed. As we enter the next era of digital media with the development and continued rise of artificial intelligence, it is left for us to wonder what role that will play in cancel culture going forward. As Wareham Morris has explained, cancel culture will not go away - it will continue to evolve as communication technologies evolve. This will mean its impact and effects will likely continue to be more emotionally affecting and potentially dangerous, if we do not learn how to engage with the media critically.