Coming to Terms with Shame: Exploring Mediated Visibility against Transgressions

Shaming in a social context is necessarily assembled, as it depends on a loosely and often spontaneously arranged network of actors to convey denunciation. Digital tools further the expansion of such networks, a development that is of particular concern for surveillance scholars. This paper seeks to advance an account of user-led surveillance of peers that is centred on the enactment and experience of shame, notably as such practices can mobilise and be mobilised by press and state-led initiatives. Drawing on literature that considers shaming in criminological, journalistic, and digital media contexts, it considers tensions and other developments among a range of social actors who perform shaming. Recent examples in the Dutch context support an understanding of shaming as a process that enrols a set of social actors to stigmatise and exclude (categories of) individuals under scrutiny

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