Individuals' Level of Self-disclosure Online and How It Influences their Participation in Cancel Culture : A qualitative study on Swedish young university students’ perception of canceling public figures vs peers

Abstract: Cancel culture is a phenomenon that has grown out of today's digitalization. It could be described as a practice to counteract injustices in society by withdrawing support for, often, a public figure or company that has expressed or behaved unacceptably according to the majority of people. In recent years, cancel culture has been a recurring term when socio-political questions engage a larger group of citizens and most of them on social media find it socially unacceptable. However, is it possible that cancel culture is used in the same way on peers as on public figures? The purpose of this research study is to build an understanding of how Swedish young university students reason around cancel culture, as well as how their attitude may alter when it comes to public figures and peers, while also diving deeper into the internet phenomenon's significance on individuals' self-disclosure online.  The three following research questions were used:RQ1: How do Swedish young university students reason around canceling public figures? RQ2: How do Swedish young university students reason around canceling peers?RQ3: How does “Cancel Culture” influence an individual’s level of self-disclosure on social media?  In this study, an inductive and empirical approach through Grounded Theory was used, which is a qualitative method that enables you to study a particular phenomenon and discover new theories that are based on the collection and analysis of real-world data. One focus group with five participants was held to gain an understanding of participants' perceptions of the phenomenon and to find patterns in similarities and differences. Further, a total of six semi-structured interviews were held to gain deeper insight into how people think, reason, and feel about cancel culture. The data were first open-coded into 34 labels and later combined into six categories to be further analyzed. The conclusion of this study is that Swedish young university students have a nuanced mindset when it comes to cancel culture and that they do not necessarily use cancel culture online to influence. Instead, they talk to their closer circle because they suppose that they have a greater chance of making a difference in situations when they can motivate their opinions in real life. This reveals that those who represent the target group in our study have a low level of self-disclosure.