To be alive in an era of problematic faves : A research overview of Cancel Culture

In just a few years, cancel culture has become the topic on everyone's lips. It's an exciting, but also to a certain extent a treacherous phenomenon that has etched into our society, both online and offline. It moves quickly and is constantly changing, but where does it come from, and what drives it? In this study, I map out how cancel and call-out culture are constructed by conducting a research overview. The theoretical framework consists of theories about the scapegoat mechanism, the public sphere, and digital activism. The material consists of 33 peer-reviewed articles. The results show that research has been conducted across several research areas, with the majority of the articles falling under the field of media and communication studies. There are divided opinions about the impact of cancel culture on the public debate. Some scholars define cancel and call-out culture on one hand as political tools that promote public debate and that can help access fundamental problems such as racism and sexism. On the other hand, the phenomena are defined as threats to democracy as the resurrection that arises when these phenomena are exercised can draw attention away from more important and more acute societal issues. Furthermore, the results show that cancel culture depends on a cross-platform engagement. Since the majority of the articles examine Twitter, this indicates that more studies need to be conducted to fully understand how cancel culture works.