Abstract

I am investigating how minority students of color find cancel culture (boycotting a brand or celebrity) to be a beneficial or harmful form of social media activism. I situate social media as a networked public and discuss how consumer activism meets social media activism, specifically on Twitter, to create cancel culture. My study includes results from a combination of a focus group and individual interviews that discuss topics of social media use, participation in cancel culture and activism involvement. This study provides a definition of cancel culture through the perspectives of generation Z social media users and discusses the duality in which cancel culture is a form of social media activism but also contributes to creating a spiral of silence online.

Advisor

Nikoi, Nii

Second Advisor

Ahmet Atay

Department

Communication Studies

Disciplines

Digital Humanities | Film and Media Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Rhetoric and Composition

Keywords

Cancel culture, STOPs Theory, Spiral of Silence, Social media, Twitter, Activism, Consumer culture

Publication Date

2020

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar

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© Copyright 2020 Korri E. Palmer