Online shaming is the use of social media, blogs and other online communication networks to publicly humiliate an individual or organization who is perceived to have committed a social transgression. This takes many forms such as: doxing, negative reviews, boycotting, call-outs, and ultimately 'cancellation'. The person or organization can receive hate mail and death threats, have personal photos posted online, have support withdrawn from sponsors and other financial services, have social media accounts taken down, be removed from online groups, lose their employment, experience in-person harassment, lose friendships, etc.
The reports of online shaming and doxing are becoming increasingly commonplace. However, back in 2005, an incident involving a young woman in Seoul not cleaning up after her dog defecated on a subway car, was one of the first internationally reported occurrences of this phenomenon. After numerous attempts by passengers to get the young woman to clean up her dog's mess went unheeded, people began snapping photos of the incident. The photos were posted on a popular Korean website and widely distributed. After this, the woman was identified, and her personal information was published online. She was heavily shamed publicly, and ended up quitting her university.
Public shaming is used more and more frequently to call out and expose blatant racist behaviour. Whether it's a racial slur or a full on insidious attack, videos gone viral have resulted in the exposed racist people losing their jobs and suffering social aggressions.
Online shaming is harassment that can ruin people's lives.
Online shaming is an infringement on free speech.
Online shaming exposes social transgressions that lead to changed attitudes and behavior.