Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Cancel culture has become a pivotal phenomenon in the modern age, transcending individual accountability to influence organizations, industries, and societal norms (Ng, 2020; Marwick, 2013; Clark, 2020; Trottier et al., 2025; Wendel, 2024). While often viewed as a human-driven process, cancel culture now also unfolds through more-than-human assemblages, as digital infrastructures, algorithmic platforms, and AI-driven systems shape, amplify, or mitigate reputational crises. This interplay broadens its impact on organizational behavior, leadership strategies, and ethical considerations, extending far beyond individual actors.
 
Recent examples, such as the public backlash faced by Ellen DeGeneres over allegations of a toxic workplace, or the first incident when AI was canceled for content it generated autonomously (Prahl et al., 2024) underscore the pervasive reach of cancel culture (Hobbs & O’Keefe, 2024; Forbes Councils, 2024). Likewise, the ongoing reputational turbulence surrounding Elon Musk – marked by boycotts, political controversy, and declining Tesla sales – illustrates how cancel culture can affect corporate valuation, stakeholder perception, and platform governance across multiple ventures, including Tesla and X (Forbes, 2025). These cases illustrate how reputational challenges can ripple outward, affecting networks, organizational structures, and widely held societal norms.
 
This sub-theme aims to explore how cancel culture, once centered on individual accountability, now influences broader organizational, institutional, and technological systems. We aim to understand how reputational crises develop across people, networks, and technologies, and how they shape organizational legitimacy, leadership, and strategy. We invite contributions that engage with the definition, typologies, scope, and ripple effects of cancel culture (Hersel et al., 2019; The Economist, 2023; Abbasi et al., 2023), while also critically examining its potential to enforce, challenge, or distort ethical norms. We welcome studies that investigate how organizations respond to crises, rebuild trust, and manage reputational complexity in environments where both human actors and technological agents jointly shape perceptions, values, and legitimacy.
 
Exploring cancel culture across organizational levels
Partnerships with public figures facing reputational crises or corporate missteps can lead to widespread backlash, requiring nuanced strategies for response and adaptation.

• How do organizations manage reputational risks associated with cancel culture?

• What strategies ensure resilience and effective response to public scrutiny?
   

Network and circle spillover
The interplay between public backlash and professional networks raises critical questions:

• How do networks and affiliations amplify or mitigate the impact of cancel culture?

• What are the ripple effects on partnerships, brands, and collaborators?

• How does cancel culture influence broader professional ecosystems?
   

Typologies and contexts
Cancel culture manifests differently across subcultures, industries, and global contexts, revealing its multifaceted nature:

• What typologies exist within cancel culture (e.g., individual, organizational, or subcultural)?

• Are certain industries or cultural contexts more resilient to cancel culture than others?
   

Technology and digital infrastructures
As organizations operate within increasingly digital and interconnected environments, technology plays a pivotal role in shaping and amplifying cancel culture:

• How do social media algorithms, platform governance, and AI-driven content generation and moderation influence the reach and intensity of cancel culture?

• How can a more-than-human perspective, acknowledging technological infrastructures, inform strategies for addressing cancel culture?
   

Comeback and reinvention strategies

• How can organizations strategically decouple brand identity from controversial figures?

• What strategies enable successful reputational recovery?

• How do organizations or individuals use apologies, rebranding, or time to regain public trust?

References

• Abbasi, A.Z., Fayyaz, M.S., Ting, D.H., Munir, M., Bashir, S., & Zhang, C. (2023): “The moderating role of complaint handling on brand hate in the cancel culture.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, 15 (1), 46–71.
• Clark, M.D. (2020): DRAG THEM: “A brief etymology of so-called ‘cancel culture’.” Communication and the Public, 5 (3–4), 88–92.
• Cummings, K.H., Zafari, B., & Beitelspacher, L. (2025): “#Canceled! Exploring the phenomenon of canceling.” Journal of Business Research, 186, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.115025.
• Forbes Councils (2024): “Cancel Culture: Navigating Public Relations in a Polarized World.” Forbes Communication Council, September 5, 2024, https://councils.forbes.com/blog/navigating-cancel-culture.
• Forbes (2025): “Tesla Stock Plummets 50%: More To Go?” Forbes, April 14, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2025/04/14/tesla-stock-plummets-50-more-to-go/.
• Hersel, M.C., Helmuth, C.A., Zorn, M.L., Shropshire, C., & Ridge, J.W. (2019): “The corrective actions organizations pursue following misconduct: A review and research agenda.” Academy of Management Annals, 13 (2), 547–585.
• Hobbs, M.J., & O’Keefe, S. (2024): “Agonism in the arena: Analyzing cancel culture using a rhetorical model of deviance and reputational repair.” Public Relations Review, 50 (1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102420.
• Marwick, A.E. (2013): Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ng, E. (2020): “No Grand Pronouncements Here..: Reflections on Cancel Culture and Digital Media Participation.” Television & New Media, 21 (6), 621–627.
• Norris, P. (2023): “Cancel culture: Myth or reality?” Political Studies, 71 (1), 145–174.
• Prahl, A., Shanice, K.J.Q., & Justina, T.A.Q. (2024): “Wired to Offend: Cancel Culture Meets Generative Artificial Intelligence.” Human-Machine Communication, 9, 81–99.
• Semenova, O.F. (2023): “Cancel Culture – the Speech Behavior of Modern Society.” Review of Business and Economics Studies, 11 (1), 13–18.
• The Economist (2023): “How to cancel ‘cancel culture’.” The Economist, October 19, 2023.
• Trottier, D., Huang, Q., & Gabdulhakov, R. (2025): Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming: The Court of Public Opinion. New York: Routledge.
• Wendel, W.B. (2024): Canceling Lawyers: Case Studies of Accountability, Toleration, and Regret. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.