Our lovely book titled 'Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming. The Court of Public Opinion' is out! It is a great feeling, not going to refrain from saying that. There is something incredibly special about holding your own book.
This feeling is amplified for me as the work is coauthored with people dear to the heart - Dr Daniel Trottier and Dr Qian Huang. We went through years of research together.
While I hold the book, I remember its cost (free open access pdf aside). Working from 7 AM to 10 PM during the PhD. I remember submitting a paper on 31 December while my wife was preparing to celebrate the new year. It reminds me of all sorts of moments - losing my father, and becoming a father myself. Feeling like I’m on top of the world and also feeling like the whole world is on top of me. Behind every achievement there is both joy and pain. I want to acknowledge both as they feed off each other. I am proud of this book, but there is sweat, blood and tears that are also involved.
Follow the links below for open access. Here is a brief description of the content and the intent.
"This book offers a common set of concepts to help make sense of online shaming practices, accounting for instances of discrimination and injury that morally divide readers and at times risk unjust and disproportionate harm to those under scrutiny.
Digital media denunciation has become a primary form of expression and entertainment across media environments, with new socially desirable forms of accountability under movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter addressing longstanding forms of systematic and interpersonal abuse. Building on recent scholarship on shaming, surveillance and denunciation in fixed contexts, this study generates a cross-contextual and multi-actor account of practices like ‘cancel culture’, ‘doxing’ and ‘status degradation ceremonies’. It addresses instances of moral ambivalence by discussing how digital shaming becomes normalised and embedded across socio-cultural and institutional settings. The authors establish key actors and practices in online denunciations of individuals in a range of cases and contexts, including responses to COVID-19, political polarisation, and social justice movements, as well as more local and quotidian circumstances. They draw from empirical data including interviews with nearly 100 individuals targeted by mediated shaming and/or involved in these practices, as well as ethnographic observations of digital vigilantism and discourse analysis of press coverage and online comments relating to online shaming. Diverse applications and contexts, including China, the UK, Russia, and Central Asia, are considered, advancing an ambivalent understanding of media and denunciation that reconciles progressive and regressive practices, as well as celebratory and critical accounts of these practices.
This book is recommended reading for advanced students and researchers of online visibility and harm across media studies, cultural studies and sociology."
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