The term ‘cancel culture’ has been used critically to describe a wide range of things: practices such as deplatforming, social exclusion, boycotts, or even public criticism. What is contested is not only which specific practices should count as instances of canceling. It also remains unclear what precisely constitutes a culture of canceling, and at what point it is appropriate to speak of one at all.
The Topical Collection – to be published in 2027 – has two objectives:
First, it seeks to examine which phenomena might actually merit the label “canceling” or even “cancel culture”, and why.
Second, it aims to clarify what, if anything, is morally problematic about them.
Contributions that take into account the challenges of the digital public sphere are particularly welcome, as are those that reflect on the political use of the labels “cancel culture” and “canceling” and address their potential role as political battle concepts.
By focusing on communicative phenomena and cultural practices that are highly contested in both academia and public discourse, the collection aims to contribute to research in communication ethics and, more specifically, to normative inquiry into the dynamics of discursive and social polarization.
Contributions – either in English or German, and with a maximum length of 9,000 words – may be submitted in anonymized form via the journal’s Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/zemo/default.aspx
All submissions undergo a double-blind peer review. Accepted contributions will be published immediately on the ZEMO website as part of the Continuous Article Publishing model.
