[Air-L] New OA Book "Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming: The Court of Public Opinion"

[Huang, Qian]

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to announce the publication of our new open-access book
"Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming: The Court of Public Opinion" (by
Daniel Trottier, Qian Huang, Rashid Gabdulhakov)

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.

With thanks to the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for their support in making
this title open access.

Free download: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003453017

Kind regards,
Dr. Qian Huang
Assistant Professor | University of Groningen | Faculty of Arts | Centre
for Media and Journalism Studies