VIRTUAL LYNCINGS AND CANCELLATION CULTURE: THE CASES PATRÍCIA CAMPOS MELLO AND LILIA SCHWARCZ
Virtual lynching; cancel culture; digital communication; sociology of the present.
This paper analyses the approximations and differences between virtual lynchings and cancel culture. Patrícia Campos Mello has been a victim of virtual lynchings after disclosing, through a report in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, a network of fake news spread by the WhatsApp application, during the 2018 election period. Lilia Schwarcz was subjected to a cancellation after issuing an opinion about the movie Black is king (2020), produced by the singer Beyoncé. The theoretical and methodological discussion is permeated by the concept of Sociology of the Present, by Edgar Morin, a perspective allied to studies on the reasons for lynchings in Brazil by the Brazilian sociologist José de Souza Martins; the concepts of crime and punishment by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim; the characteristics of the harassment masses by the Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti; the peculiarities of crowds, according to the ideas of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde; and digital communication and digital swarm by the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, among other concepts. Books, publications in digital media, articles, reports, news and interviews are part of the methodological framework of this paper. The argument of this research is that, among similarities and differences, both virtual lynching and cancel culture are violent collective practices that aim at the virtual annihilation of the other.