Digilantism, discrimination, and punitive attitudes: A digital vigilantism model

Abstract

In this article, I propose and apply a digital vigilantism model to a specific incident that occurred in Mexico, where the death of two innocent people was filmed through Facebook Live. Using a mixed methods approach and content analysis, I analyzed digilante Facebook posts ( N = 942) coding gender, digital vigilantism categories, discriminatory comments, and punitive attitudes aimed at the perpetrators and the inciter of the lynching. The categories include investigating, blaming, or rebuking, while the discriminatory comments include classism, racism, homophobia, and body-shaming. I coded the punitive attitudes distinguishing four categories: non-physical punishment (calling for God’s wrath and the guilty conscience of the targets), legal sanction, death, and other punishment. The findings reveal the key role gender played in digilantism: females tend to conduct more investigations and low level attacks (blaming) than males, but males tend to perpetrate more harsh attacks (rebuking) than females. The most popular punitive attitude is calling for the death of targets, revealing tensions between legal sanctions and digilantes’ desired punishment. This study suggests the presence of different expressions of discrimination and reasons to engage in digilantism, encompassing both legal and illegal behavior deployed in a mainstream social media platform such as Facebook.

Digital Advocacy for Punitive Justice and Vigilantism: Analyzing Citizen Dissatisfaction with the Klitih Prevention Policy

“…Then, we also highlight how people behave on the internet, which may be different if realized in real life. The latter argument presumes that vigilantism on the internet expresses a diverse nature between seeking to solve crimes or being motivated solely by the pleasures of anonymity (Galleguillos, 2021) and results from frustration with current policies that do not address the recurring Klitih problem.…”

Digilantism Practice: The Online Shaming for the Cheaters

“…Although Reddit's virtual detective efforts did not solve the case, their actions demonstrate the potential role the public can play in the social media network. Galleguillos (2021) in analyzing modeling and categorizing the practice of digilantism, people who tend to make discriminatory comments, investigate perpetrators, reprimand others for bodyshaming. In their research, women tend to do more investigating the perpetrator and call for the target's death.…”