Cancel culture on social media: its impact on public narrative and
ethical challenges
La cultura de la cancelación en redes sociales: impacto en la narrativa pública y
desafíos éticos
doxa.comunicación |
nº 43, pp. 491-497
| 491
July-December of 2026
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Zamorano-Rojas, A. D.; Romero-Delgado, C. I. and Camacho-Gómez, M. C. (2026). Cancel culture on social media: its impact on public
narrative and ethical challenges.
Doxa Comunicación
, 43, pp. 491-497.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.3127
Alma Delia Zamorano-Rojas
holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences, specializing in Communication, from the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She is a full-time Research Professor at Universidad Panamericana
and has been a member of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI) since 2010.
Her research focuses on audiovisual culture and lm studies, with particular attention to transformations in Mexican
cinema and contemporary narratives. She has published articles, book chapters, and academic works and has
participated in national and international conferences. Her work integrates theoretical and methodological approaches
to develop a critical understanding of cinema as a cultural phenomenon, combining historical, discursive, and aesthetic
analysis within communication studies..
Universidad Panamericana, México
[email protected]
ORCID:
0000-0002-7043-4977
Claudia Ivett Romero-Delgado
holds a PhD in Documentation Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid,
with academic training in Communication, Institutional Communication, and Anthropology. She is a full-time Research
Professor at Universidad Panamericana and a Level I member of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and
Innovation (SECIHTI). Her research lies at the intersection of communication, society, and digital culture, focusing on
social responsibility, sustainability, organizational reputation, and media studies. She has published in indexed journals
and edited volumes and actively participates in international academic forums. She has professional experience as a
journalist, editor, and publicist and contributes as a guest columnist for
El Economista,
engaging in public discourse on
communication and societal issues.
Universidad Panamericana, México
[email protected]
ORCID:
0000-0002-5001-8992
María del Carmen Camacho-Gómez
holds a PhD in Documentation Sciences from the Complutense University of
Madrid. She is a full-time Research Professor at Universidad Panamericana and a Level I member of the Secretariat
of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI). Her research focuses on audiovisual narrative and
historical ction, with particular attention to meaning-making processes in media products. She has published in peer-
reviewed journals and academic books and has participated in national and international conferences. She has over
15 years of professional experience as a screenwriter and audiovisual program coordinator and has collaborated on
international projects with the BBC and NHK. is academic and professional background strengthens her analytical
and applied approach to communication studies.
Universidad Panamericana, México
[email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4121-6081
is content is published under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. International License CC BY-NC 4.0
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July-December of 2026
Cancel Culture on Social Media: Impact on Public Narrative and Ethical Challenges
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
doxa.comunicación
1.
Introduction
e last decade has seen so-called cancel culture become one of the most visible expressions of symbolic justice in online
settings. It involves the exclusion or public shaming of gures or institutions for behaviours considered morally unacceptable.
Its eectiveness derives from the platforms’ immediacy and their capacity to amplify collective emotions.
Clark (2020) warns that cancelling “is not simply excluding but disputing one’s right to participate in the public conversa
-
tion” (p. 90). Ronson (2015) warns about the risk of online shaming turning into a lynching that exceeds the protest’s original
purpose. Between legitimate grievance and punitive excess, cancelling reects deep tensions between symbolic justice and
persecution.
Social media, as aective infrastructure, sets the boundaries of what is acceptable in the public sphere. Ahmed (2014) arms
that “aects set the boundaries of the moral community” (p. 10). Speaking from a Latin American perspective, García Canclini
(2020) adds that “participation on social media does not guarantee dialogue; it can reproduce symbolic hierarchies under the
guise of equality” (p. 72). is paper analyses how such boundaries are apparent in three paradigmatic cases that occurred
between 2020 and 2023, and what ethical implications arise from the dynamics of outrage and virality that accompanied them.
2. Methodology
e study was carried out using a qualitative and interpretive approach, focused on understanding the social and emotional
meanings that structure the dynamics of online cancel culture. Rather than measuring the magnitude of the interactions, the
objective was to analyse the moral and discursive meanings that emerge around episodes of cancel culture and how these
mould new forms of visibility and symbolic exclusion.
ree cases that achieved signicant notoriety on Twitter and Instagram were chosen: Chumel Torres (2020), Zara (2021), and
María Elena Ríos (2023). e selection was based on criteria of media impact, thematic diversity, and representativeness of
dierent forms of cancellation (individual, corporate, and activist).
Recibido: 14/10/2025 - Aceptado: 24/11/2025 - En edición: 22/06/2026 - Publicado: 01/07/2026
Resumen:
Esta nota analiza cómo la cultura de la cancelación en redes sociales
impacta en la conguración de narrativas públicas y plantea desa
-
fíos éticos a la comunicación digital. A partir del análisis de tres ca
-
sos ampliamente difundidos en Twitter e Instagram entre 2020 y 2023
–Chumel Torres, Zara y María Elena Ríos– se identican los marcos mo
-
rales predominantes y la inuencia de los algoritmos en la amplica
-
ción emocional.
Palabras clave:
Cultura de la cancelación, redes sociales, narrativa pública, ética digital.
Received: 30/06/2025 - Accepted: 24/11/2025 - Early access: 22/06/2026 - Published: 01/07/2026
Abstract:
is note examines how cancel culture on social media shapes public
narratives and raises ethical challenges in digital communication.
Based on three highly publicized cases on Twitter and Instagram
between 2020 and 2023 –Chumel Torres, Zara, and María Elena Ríos– it
identies prevailing moral frameworks and the inuence of algorithms
on emotional amplication.
Keywords:
Cancel culture, social media, public narrative, digital ethics.
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nº 43, pp. 491-497
July-December of 2026
Alma Delia Zamorano-Rojas, Claudia Ivett Romero-Delgado and María del Carmen Camacho-Gómez
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
| 493
e Chumel Torres case saw the cancelling arise from comments considered classist and racist, made on Twitter and on his
program,
El Pulso de la República
. e controversy grew when the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (CONAPRED)
removed him from a forum on racism and discrimination, sparking a broad debate about the limits of political humour and
discursive responsibility.
e Zara episode originated in 2021 when the Mexican Ministry of Culture accused the brand of cultural appropriation for
using Mixtec embroidery on commercial garments without reference to its origin. e ocial protest triggered the hashtags
#ZaraRacista and #ApropiaciónCultural, along with calls for a boycott. e case illustrated the growing demand for cultural
justice and corporate responsibility in global consumption.
e activist and saxophonist María Elena Ríos, a survivor of an acid attack, sparked controversy on social media in 2023 after
responding vehemently to criticism she considered oensive. Some users felt her response to be aggressive, generating a wave
of online hostility. e case highlighted the dynamic of counter-cancelling, in which an initially supported gure is later ques
-
tioned for an alleged deviation from the moral norms of online activism.
e corpus was made up of approximately 2,000 public posts, identied through hashtags, mentions, and links to news outlets.
e messages were gathered manually utilising advanced search tools; priority was given to those with the highest level of
interaction (retweets, comments, or reactions).
e analysis combined thematic content analysis and moral coding techniques (Gee, 2014). e rst phase identied the dom
-
inant topics –shame, justice, and policing–; the second interpreted their connections to processes of viralisation and collective
reappropriation. “Cancelling feeds on symbolic lynching driven by emotional virality” (Ronson, 2015, p. 22).
e work respected the ethical principles of anonymization and the exclusive use of open-access material (Markham &
Buchanan, 2012). us, the research seeks to oer a critical reading of the aective and moral structure of cancel culture on
social media, understood as a communicative, political, and emotional phenomenon.
3. Results
e three cases demonstrate that moral outrage becomes the driving force behind a conversation. e most emotional
-
ly-charged posts achieve greater visibility, while more moderate messages tend to have less impact. at pattern conrms the
logic of what Bouvier and Machin (2021) call the outrage economy, describing how platforms reward content that provokes
immediate anger or empathy.
As shown in Table 1, each case reects a distinct type of social response and a dominant moral framework that shapes the
public narrative.
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Cancel Culture on Social Media: Impact on Public Narrative and Ethical Challenges
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
doxa.comunicación
Table 1. Cases analysed and main characteristics
Case
Main platformDominant moral frameworkEmergent narrative
ATwitter
Shame / lynching
Transformation of the individual into a moral
symbol
BInstagram
Justice / reparatione public as brand auditor
C
Twitter + digital press
Counter-cancelling
Reconguration of the narrative towards the victim
Source: Created by the authors based on data gathered on Twitter and Instagram (2020–2023)
e results show that the online conversation surrounding cancel culture is typically organized around three main axes: public
shame, moral reparation, and defensive reactions to being singled out. Shame acts as a social control mechanism in most of
the exchanges analysed, amplied by the use of memes, punitive labels, and irony-laden messages., Discourses focused on
reparation, or the pursuit of symbolic justice emerge simultaneously, where the online community assumes the role of moral
judge and demands apologies, boycotts, or public retractions.
However, narratives often change, what begins as censure ends up turning into victimization of the accused when the criticism
is perceived to be disproportionate or unfair. e phenomenon is in line with what Norris (2023) calls the “circularity of online
outrage” (p. 231), a dynamic in which collective emotion feeds o itself, erasing nuances, and reproducing cycles of aggression
and defence without real resolution.
Table 2
summarizes the frequency with which coded moral frameworks occur in the posts analysed.
Table 2. Frequency of moral frameworks in posts analysed
Moral frameworkNumber of mentions
Shame / accusation
14
Justice / reparation
10
Hectoring / policing
8
Source: created by the authors based on thematic coding (2023)
It should be noted that the frequencies shown in the table do not add up to the total number of posts in the corpus (2,000), but
rather to the count of thematic items identied through the coding process. Each value reects the conceptual recurrence with
which the moral frameworks of shame, justice, or policing appeared in online discourse.
e gures should be understood as interpretive indicators of the predominance of certain discursive patterns, rather than as
absolute statistical data.
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nº 43, pp. 491-497
July-December of 2026
Alma Delia Zamorano-Rojas, Claudia Ivett Romero-Delgado and María del Carmen Camacho-Gómez
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
| 495
e analysis of the three cases –Chumel Torres (2020), Zara (2021), and María Elena Ríos (2023)– reveals a common pattern in
how online communities manage moral outrage. Although the situations dier, they all demonstrate the interaction between
collective emotions, visibility algorithms, and discourses of ethical correctness.
e Chumel Torres case saw the conversation form around public shaming. Users reinterpreted the comedian’s comments
as evidence of systemic racism and classism, generating a wave of memes and hashtags that functioned as tools of symbolic
punishment. Public humiliation reinforced the moral identity of the cancelling group and consolidated the boundary between
the acceptable and the intolerable.
With Zara, the focus shifted to moral redress. e accusation of cultural appropriation, launched from Mexico, became a global
demand for symbolic justice. Social media acted as a transnational forum for online activism, where consumption turned into
political action. However, the initial enthusiasm faded within days, revealing the ephemeral nature of online engagement.
e case of María Elena Ríos revealed a shift in the narrative: the accuser was gradually transformed into a victim of online
harassment. at change serves to illustrate the fragility of public morality in the digital sphere, where initial empathy may ip
over into aggression. e logic of cancelling and counter-cancelling coexist, generating cycles of tension that are never fully
resolved.
ose three episodes show that cancel culture operates not only as a moral sanction, but as a collective ritual that combines
emotion, identity, and symbolic power. Users nd a form of civic participation in the act of protest, but also a space to arm
moral hierarchies. Ahmed (2014) warns that “emotions not only circulate, but also set the boundaries of belonging to a com
-
munity” (p. 11).
Figure 1. Moral dynamics of online cancel culture (2020–2023)
generating a wave of memes and hashtags that functioned as tools of symbolic punishment.
P
ublic humiliation reinforced the moral identity of the cancel
ling
group and
consolidated
the boundary between
the
acceptable and
the
intolerable.
With
Zara, the focus shifted to moral
redress.
The
accusation
of cultural appropriation,
launched from Mexico,
became
a global demand for symbolic justice. Social media acted
as a transnational forum for
online
activism, where consumption turned into political
action. However, the initial enthusiasm faded within days, revealing the ephemeral nature
of
online
engagement.
The case of María Elena Ríos revealed a shift in the narrative: the
accuser
was gradually
transformed into a victim of online harassment. Th
at
change serves to illustrate the fragility
of public morality in the digital sphere, where initial empathy
may
flip
over
into aggression.
The logic of
cancelling
and counter
-cancelling
coexist, generating cycles of tension that
are never
ful
ly resolved.
Tho
se three episodes show that cancel culture operates not only as a moral sanction, but as
a collective ritual that combines emotion, identity, and symbolic power. Users find a form
of civic participation in the act of
protest
, but also a space to affirm moral hierarchies.
Ahmed (2014) warns that “emotions not only circulate, but also
set
the boundaries of
belonging to a community” (p. 11).
Figure 1. Moral dynamics of
online
cancel culture (2020
–
2023)
Source:
Creat
ed by the author based on Twitter and Instagram posts (2020
–
2023).
Taken together, the results allow for an
understand
ing of the emotional and discursive
structure of
online
cancel culture. The cycle of outrage tends to reproduce itself thanks to
Source: Created by the author based on Twitter and Instagram posts (2020–2023)
Taken together, the results allow for an understanding of the emotional and discursive structure of online cancel culture. e
cycle of outrage tends to reproduce itself thanks to the logic of visibility on the platforms. As Gillespie (2018) states, the plat
-
forms do not operate as neutral intermediaries, but as curatorial systems that prioritize certain content based on its ability to
generate interaction and visibility. In the same vein, Fuchs (2022) emphasizes that “platforms are not just technological media,
but political systems that organize attention and punishment” (p. 44).
e interaction between technology and morality produces a kind of instant justice that depends more on algorithmic rhythm
than on ethical reasoning. As García Canclini (2020) puts it, “participation on social media does not always expand democracy;
it sometimes reproduces the symbolic inequalities of the oine world” (p. 75).
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Cancel Culture on Social Media: Impact on Public Narrative and Ethical Challenges
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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4. Conclusions
e study conrms that cancel culture on social media functions as an emotional ecosystem where audiences actively partic
-
ipate in the building of public morality. e three cases analysed –Chumel Torres, Zara, and María Elena Ríos– show that col
-
lective outrage is the driving force behind processes of visibility and symbolic sanction. All three see shame, moral justice, and
counter-cancelling entwine to generate narratives that swing between protest and punishment. e online attention economy
turns emotion into symbolic currency: the more intense the reaction, the greater the visibility achieved. Algorithms are not
neutral; they amplify conict, organize a hierarchy of voices, and establish new boundaries of discursive legitimacy. us, can
-
cel culture reveals a community’s values, as well as the structural limitations of the platforms that mediate the conversation.
vanFrom an ethical perspective, the results highlight the need to develop ethics of online curation aimed at moderating the
speed of judgment and encouraging deliberation. Such an ethic requires critical empathy that allows for the contextualizing of
actions and recognizing the possibility of change, discursive responsibility that fosters reection on the consequences of pub
-
lic shaming, and algorithmic transparency that compels platforms to acknowledge their role in amplifying outrage. Van Dijck,
Poell, and de Waal (2018) state that “online responsibility involves recognizing that every interaction contributes to shaping
the social norms of the online environment” (p. 18). Adopting this perspective means shifting from a morality of punishment
to an ethic of dialogue, in which mistakes can become learning opportunities.
On an academic level, this research provides an interpretive framework for understanding the relationship between emotion,
technology, and symbolic power in cancel culture. Its focus on Latin American cases adds to the global debate and incorpo
-
rates cultural nuances often absent from English-language literature. Fuchs (2022) argues that “platforms are not just techno
-
logical media, but political systems that organize attention and punishment” (p. 44), while García Canclini (2020) warns that
online participation can reproduce the symbolic hierarchies of the oine world. Cancel culture is found at this intersection
of emotion and technological power: a eld where public morality is constantly being negotiated under the algorithmic logic
of visibility.
Future research could explore the regional dimension of this phenomenon –for example, the discursive dierences between
Latin American countries or the inuence of traditional media in legitimizing online punishment– and examine how new
formats of audiovisual communication reinforce or mitigate punitive dynamics. Cancel culture is not going to disappear; it is
now part of how contemporary societies negotiate their values and emotions. However, its transformative power will depend
on online communities learning to balance outrage with empathy and denunciation with reection. As Ahmed (2014) says,
emotions are not just responses, but forces that congure bonds and exclusions. Understanding that aective dimension is
fundamental to imagining a more just, pluralistic, and truly human online environment.
5. Conict of interest
e authors declare that they have no conict of interest.
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Alma Delia Zamorano-Rojas, Claudia Ivett Romero-Delgado and María del Carmen Camacho-Gómez
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6.
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