‘What Happens Next?’: Does Digital Vigilantism Work?
You don’t have to look further than Hollywood to see society’s obsession with vigilantism – superhero movies have been reliable blockbusters for more than a decade. It’s easy to see the appeal of a hero identifying a crime that’s been overlooked by the proper authorities, and delivering justice for the public good.
It’s also easy to see why that resonates with us. In the past few years, a number of social movements, from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, have made us more aware than ever of the wrongdoers who’ve escaped accountability, and the victims who’ve been let down, or even wrongly targeted, by existing systems and laws. It feels good when Batman gets it right on the big screen when it’s so hard to do in the real world.
Read: Should we celebrate or lament the pop culture endurance of Batman, a violent vigilante?
But the ethics of the DC and Marvel universes are not the ethics of our universe. Although the digital age has made it easy for citizens – even those of us without superpowers – to assist law enforcement in identifying and reporting crimes, and to engage in online activism, when internet users take matters into their own hands, problems arise. Across the political spectrum, groups are enacting digital vigilantism to try to right perceived wrongs, and even to exact their own forms of justice.
Monash University’s What Happens Next? podcast returns with a new, two-part series investigating digital vigilantism. What are the dangers that arise when keyboard warriors utilise the internet to distribute citizen justice? And are there ethical ways for private citizens to address wrongs?
“The digital form multiplies opportunities to monitor and intervene in the lives of others. It can amplify visibility, it can make actions more enduring, and importantly, it can also transcend particular contexts. So we get this cutting across cultural, social, and political boundaries that we may not have seen with vigilantism in its original form.”
Dr Mark Howard
In this week’s episode, host Dr Susan Carland is joined by journalist Ginger Gorman, author of Troll Hunting; criminologist Dr Lennon Chang, philosopher Dr Mark Howard, and violent extremism expert Dr Josh Roose. They’ll discuss the dark side of digital vigilantism, and answer the question: Does it really work?
What Happens Next? will be back next week with part two of this series, “Are There Good Trolls?”.
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