Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them

The concept of cancel culture has gained traction over the past 10 years, with the continuous rise of social media and online platforms. The limited literature on this topic tends to focus on possible definitions and characteristics. However, we have yet to fully understand how cancel culture, cance...

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Main Authors: Tiago Rôxo Aguiar, Diniz Lopes, Thomas R. Brooks
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2025-01-01
Series:Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/hbe2/8479135
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author Tiago Rôxo Aguiar
Diniz Lopes
Thomas R. Brooks
author_facet Tiago Rôxo Aguiar
Diniz Lopes
Thomas R. Brooks
author_sort Tiago Rôxo Aguiar
collection DOAJ
description The concept of cancel culture has gained traction over the past 10 years, with the continuous rise of social media and online platforms. The limited literature on this topic tends to focus on possible definitions and characteristics. However, we have yet to fully understand how cancel culture, canceling, and canceling prevention impact individuals and their lives. As such, we set out to build an empirical base that would allow us to delimit, understand, and study these individual impacts of cancel culture by proposing a new model—the pressure for a perfect conduct (PPC) model. We interviewed 20 people from different age groups to understand how cancel culture impacts their lives and which variables could be related to the pressure that derives from it. We also gathered data on their opinion regarding our proposed model and key variable, “PPC.” Our results seem to indicate that our model and the PPC variable can be used in the study of cancel culture’s individual impacts. Additionally, participants posited that this pressure negatively impacts individuals’ mental health, opinion construction, and social media participation. Furthermore, they reported that cancelling can be performed by and to anyone, not being limited to powerful figures. Further results and potential future studies are discussed. This work can help unlock future research on the topic by bringing forth a novel way to tackle it, as well as by exploring some of cancel culture’s implications at an individual level.
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spelling doaj-art-310c3ded0d444372bb6cd599378831df2025-08-20T02:09:25ZengWileyHuman Behavior and Emerging Technologies2578-18632025-01-01202510.1155/hbe2/8479135Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore themTiago Rôxo Aguiar0Diniz Lopes1Thomas R. Brooks2CIS-IscteCIS-IscteDepartment of PsychologyThe concept of cancel culture has gained traction over the past 10 years, with the continuous rise of social media and online platforms. The limited literature on this topic tends to focus on possible definitions and characteristics. However, we have yet to fully understand how cancel culture, canceling, and canceling prevention impact individuals and their lives. As such, we set out to build an empirical base that would allow us to delimit, understand, and study these individual impacts of cancel culture by proposing a new model—the pressure for a perfect conduct (PPC) model. We interviewed 20 people from different age groups to understand how cancel culture impacts their lives and which variables could be related to the pressure that derives from it. We also gathered data on their opinion regarding our proposed model and key variable, “PPC.” Our results seem to indicate that our model and the PPC variable can be used in the study of cancel culture’s individual impacts. Additionally, participants posited that this pressure negatively impacts individuals’ mental health, opinion construction, and social media participation. Furthermore, they reported that cancelling can be performed by and to anyone, not being limited to powerful figures. Further results and potential future studies are discussed. This work can help unlock future research on the topic by bringing forth a novel way to tackle it, as well as by exploring some of cancel culture’s implications at an individual level.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/hbe2/8479135
spellingShingle Tiago Rôxo Aguiar
Diniz Lopes
Thomas R. Brooks
Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies
title Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
title_full Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
title_fullStr Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
title_full_unstemmed Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
title_short Qualitative Insights Into Cancel Culture Prevention, Its Potential Individual Impacts, and How to Explore them
title_sort qualitative insights into cancel culture prevention its potential individual impacts and how to explore them
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/hbe2/8479135
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