Üsküdar Üniversitesi Faculty of Communication, New Media and Journalism Associate Professor Dr. Aylin Tutgun Ünal spoke to TRT Haber. Ünal, evaluating cancel culture, also known as lynching culture, which has been frequently encountered on social media recently, said, “Cancel culture, or lynching culture among the public, aims to consciously harm individuals, events, and posts.”
Ünal, touching upon the psychological reasons behind lynching culture;
“Individuals, with the freedom they gained on social media, have started to say things they wouldn't utter in daily life. Lynching can be initiated due to people's attempts to achieve things they cannot in reality, their sadness when they fail, and reasons arising from their inability to satisfy these emotions. What we actually call disinhibition is the inability to control oneself, to control one's emotions, and the projection of feelings such as excessive anger, extreme resentment, and extreme sadness—emotions not accepted by society—onto social media.”
“We recommend accelerating individuals’ social media literacy skills.”
Ünal, providing information on how to deal with lynching culture: “At this point, we recommend accelerating individuals’ social media literacy skills. In other words, conscious use is very important here. We have especially included this academically in our courses. Thanks to this training and these skills, people can see the effects of their actions. That is, our empathy skills need to develop, and we need to pay attention to our posts. We need to confirm the accuracy or falsehood of some information. I believe we can solve these problems related to social media use with psychological support.”
“Posts should be made by anticipating sensitivity or potential harm”
Ünal, providing information on how we can prevent lynching culture; “If it is a personal post, we can pay attention to the emotions it contains. We can make more careful posts by verifying ourselves whether it contains a negative emotion, or whether we can foresee if any person will be offended or harmed. Especially everyone with a high number of followers acts as an opinion leader. In this sense, comments can be restricted. If we are careful, perhaps malicious comments from fake accounts can be restricted. We must maintain our self-control, social media security settings, and make our posts in a healthy manner.”