Thompson - The Moral Risks of Online Shaming

  Just a short note on Krista K. Thompson's "The Moral Risks of Online Shaming" - a paper that appears in OUP's "The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics" (2018).


The paper itself deals with Shaming, the practice of calling out or stigmatizing people, institutions, corporations, etc. Shaming comes apart from experiences of shame themselves - and while individuals may in fact feel shame at being shamed, they need not even if the shaming act is effective in other ways.

Indeed, the overall effects of shaming are what are at issue - it can be, it seems, extraordinarily effective, but perhaps not in ways we might anticipate.

Thompson identifies two primary motivations for shaming practices.

First, shaming is "meant to inspire self-consciousness or self-awareness" (her emphasis).

Second, "shaming is meant to send a message of condemnation on behalf of and to the community" (again, the emphasis is hers).

I think that these two motivations make sense in terms of the overall structure of shame as an emotion itself - the community of values that stands over and judges the self.

In terms of the "moral risks" of Shaming, Thompson mostly focuses the bulk of the paper on the potential negative ramifications with regards to the communal aspects (the second motivation above). 

She identifies three main problems with shaming practices.

The risk of disproportionality

This is, roughly, the thought that online shaming (in particular) is often disproportionate to the offense.
Thompson identifies two potential issues here
 
1. "[T]the shamed person receives far more negative attention than he or she deserves"
2. "[O]nline shaming can have lasting or permanent effects that it should not have"
 
What's interesting about having thought about shame and shaming before and after the explosion of social media (like I have), is that the internet has changed the character of these practices in terms of scale and pervasiveness. While shaming has always existed, the kinds of internet pile ons that sometimes occur, the sharing of messages and commenting by thousands of people, have only been possible for the last fifteen or so years. Further, everything on the internet is permanent (more or less) and instances of internet shaming are discoverable in a fraction of a second.

The risk to (epistemic and moral) co-deliberation

I found this discussion fascinating - I won't repeat the arguments, but in essence the idea is that individuals who have been the object of shaming practices are in some sense excluded from the discourse of and about moral norms. 
 
"Similar to the risk of epistemic co-deliberation, the marshaling of negative attention that is central to shaming typically has the effect of simply silencing the shamed person. Shaming is risky because it closes off the negotiation process that is essential for working out our moral understandings" (Thompson, 2018)

The risk to creating safe communities

Another interesting discussion - this time focusing on the potential effects to community safety, inclusion, and openness given the ever present threat of shaming. Includes some fascinating stuff about moral grandstanding and purity.

Generally, I liked the paper, a quick read and well written - it has some really wonderful examples and makes some good points. The discussion of alternatives to shaming is also useful. 

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