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This article argues that Slavoj Žižek's provocative speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair was a political event of the first order. Described as a major scandal triggered by Žižek's remarks on the Israel-Hamas war, the speech was much more than a deliberate provocation. It provides a window into a world that had become unhinged long before the conflict erupted anew. It offers an opportunity to observe the complex relationship between individuals, institutions, and society. It continues to be a cautionary tale that illustrates the thin line between courage and hypocrisy; and how difficult it is to practise diversity in a world gripped by the dangerous logic of evil. Thus, Žižek's opening address transcends its immediate context because it brings us up against one of today's defining questions: what does it mean, and what does it take, to practise diversity when facing the most divisive topics of our time? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While cancel culture has become a social media buzzword, scholarly understanding of this phenomenon is still at its nascent stage. To contribute to a more nuanced understanding of cancel culture, this study uses a sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach by starting with in-depth interviews with social media users (n = 20) followed by a national online survey (n = 786) in Singapore. Through the interviews, we found that our participants understand cancel culture as more than just a mob engaged in public shaming on social media; it also involves perceptions of power imbalance and social justice. Building on these perspectives from our interviews, we tested the framework of theory of planned behavior in predicting intention to engage in cancel culture and expanded it by examining the effects of people's belief in a just world using an online national survey in Singapore. The analysis showed that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were positively related to intention to engage in cancel culture, while general belief in a just world was a negative predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entertainment journalism has long been a marginal object of academic inquiry due to its reputation as a trivial distraction from public affairs journalism, yet this view has since been challenged by scholars who emphasize its substantive role in political discourse. Although previous research has disputed the idea that entertainment news helps audiences forge connections with public issues, the present study renews this line of inquiry at a time when this journalism has increasingly become a driver of political reporting and opinion, particularly in tandem with activism efforts addressing the media representation of marginalized identity groups as well as celebrity-fueled public advocacy. In-depth interviews are used to illuminate the interpretive processes of US audience members who engage online with this news, outlining how it is used as a resource for navigating the politics of media representation, for making political meanings from celebrity culture, and for fulminating right-wing backlash to cultural institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that the vision of moral growth offered in Proverbs serves as an alternative and antidote to the contemporary phenomenon of cancel culture. After briefly surveying cancel culture, it begins by considering the chiasmus structure of Proverbs 9. This chapter indicates that reception to correction is a key characteristic of the wise person who seeks to dine at Wisdom's table. Altogether, the proverbial theme of reproof indicates that the moral community that Proverbs envisions displays a willingness to give and receive corrective dialogue. This is a direct opposite to the phenomenon of cancel culture, which refuses to invest in others' moral growth and instead wields a view of self-achieved moral mastery. Proverbs, by contrast, insists that a wise person's receptivity to correction, and their correlative willingness to invest in others' moral growth by rebuking them in love, is related to the wise person's understanding of their place as a guest in a world hosted by Wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are witnessing an era of increased intensity of consumer activism (and its discontents) within the arts, cultural and media industries. Ethical, radical, activist and even 'woke' consumer interests are now actively catered to across almost all goods and services, from food, fashion and fast-moving consumer goods to tourism, transport and finance. The aim of this paper is to analyse another field where these practices have recently focussed – the media and cultural industries. Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified feminist and ethical consumers, this article examines how hyperconscious ethical consumption of cultural and media content is lived out and experienced as careful consumption. How are these careful audience activities described, rationalised and understood by the interview participants? What deliberative processes do they undertake and how does that guide them to certain conclusions about what media, art and culture they are willing to watch or not, where they draw the line, and why? This article shows how perceptions of consumer choice, responsibility and culpability are being channelled into an aspirational ethics, involving forms of self-improvement, self-care and self-control such as screening and filtering content, 'cancelling' and boycotting media, and attempts to correct, optimise and diversify our tastes and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the so-called 'anti-woke' culture war is deconstructed through the notions of metapolitics in fascist discourses – linked to the Gramscian 'hegemonisation' and 'the war of position' – as well as the Schmittian friend/enemy distinction coupled with theories of deviance and moral panics. The appropriation of the neo-fascist culture war discourse by the mainstream right in the UK is analysed discursively, combining political discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach and discourse-conceptual analysis. The anti-woke culture war by the British conservative party as well as rightwing media will serve to analyse how social justice struggles like anti-racism, anti-sexism and pro-LGBTQ rights are being abnormalised and positioned as extreme deviant political positions. Linked to this, so-called 'cancel culture' is strategically deployed by dominant groups to neutralise contestations against racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ views. Finally, freedom of speech and the right to offend is weaponised to protect racist and discriminatory language and to position these idea's as valid opinions worthy of democratic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed debates about so-called "cancel culture" and more broadly about online accountability practices. Here we revisit this topic through a study of YouTube "drama," a hybrid genre where creators provide commentary on the scandals, scams, and feuds between YouTube celebrities. Drawing on cultural studies scholarship, and based on qualitative interviews and content analysis, we argue that YouTube drama embodies a range of cultural and moral negotiations that take place on social media platforms. We conceptualize accountability practices on YouTube as an ongoing "platform drama" in which creators engage in perpetual and highly visible power struggles with celebrities, audiences, legacy media, other creators, and YouTube itself. Within the context of this "platform drama," structural issues and interpersonal conflicts become blurred, as do accountability practices and monetized spectacles. We analyze "cancelation" on YouTube as a ritualistic practice in which structural tensions are publicly negotiated and performed, even as accountability itself remains largely elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although social media influencers enjoy a coveted status position in the popular imagination, their requisite career visibility opens them up to intensified public scrutiny and—more pointedly—networked hate and harassment. Key repositories of such critique are influencer "hateblogs"—forums for anti-fandom often dismissed as frivolous gossip or, alternatively, denigrated as conduits for cyberbullying and misogyny. This article draws upon an analysis of a women-dominated community of anti-fans, Get Off My Internets (GOMIBLOG), to show instead how influencer hateblogs are discursive sites of gendered authenticity policing. Findings reveal that GOMI participants wage patterned accusations of duplicity across three domains where women influencers seemingly "have it all": career, relationships, and appearance. But while antifans' policing of "fake" femininity may purport to dismantle the artifice of social media self-enterprise, such expressions fail to advance progressive gender politics, as they target individual-level—rather than structural—inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents different theories and comparative analyses of freedom of speech in both liberal and non-liberal traditions. Whereas freedom of speech is not an absolute right, the question is if this right should depend wholly on the truth of the respective opinion or statement. Theories that justify free speech on the grounds of autonomy, tend to make truth a moral requirement of speech. Theories based on civility and public reason do restrict freedom of speech even further, often making a form of recognition a precondition of free speech. This reveals to be particularly relevant in multicultural contexts and discussions about blasphemy. From this overview of contemporary, global comparative debates on free speech, the article draws some conclusions. First, there should be the absolute primacy of free speech regarding governments and the powerful: Speak truth to power. Second, free speech should underlie no constraints where important individual rights are at stake. Third, academic freedom has a special status and should not be subject to the same limits as freedom of expression more generally. Forth, in civil society and the public sphere a more moderate approach to free speech should be adopted based on civility, public reason and recognition. Yet, any limits should be of moral and not legal nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter campaigns attacking those who make racist or xenophobic statements are valuable, raising the public profile of opinions that will not tolerate racism in any form. They also indicate how our major institutions are failing to address important matters of social justice. But there is concern that social media, such as Twitter, tends to extremes, moral outrages, lack of nuance and incivility, which shape how issues become represented. In this paper, using Critical Discourse Analysis, we look at three Twitter hashtags calling-out racist behaviour. We ask how racism and anti-racism is represented on these hashtags? We show how these misrepresent fundamental aspects of racism in society, distracting from, what race theorists would argue, is the most important thing these incidents tell us about racism at this present time. The findings have consequences for all such Twitter social justice campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]