Recasting the manifestations of online stigmatized shaming: The case of Hong Kong

Online stigmatized shaming is a form of digital vigilantism in which people condemn alleged deviants online by harming their reputations. Notwithstanding its contemporary significance, the mechanism of how a specific target is pragmatically shamed, and so stigmatized is still an avenue where existing literature has yet to give explicit attention to. Based on a retrospective study of three empirical cases in Hong Kong, this article offers a conceptual discussion arguing that online stigmatized shaming is a dynamic process that degrades the status of deviants in distinctive ways – through which it transforms them into corresponding types of ‘celetoid’. I distinguish three patterns of online stigmatized shaming that represent different forms of reputational punishment: associative labelling, publification, and uncovering, all of which highlight some of the key characteristics of the shaming events we have witnessed online.