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Walter Palmer poses alongside a previous kill. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Walter Palmer's online shaming: Social media revives medieval-style public humiliation

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AFP

The killing of a Zimbabwean lion by an American dentist is a vivid reminder of how, in this era of social media, it's a virtual jungle out there.

Big game hunter Walter Palmer joins a growing list of individuals - famous and not so famous - who have been publicly, even ruthlessly shamed on Twitter and Facebook, the village stocks of the 21st century.

"He needs to be extradited, charged and preferably hanged" for slaying game park lion Cecil, said animal rights group Peta.

"I hope you burn in hell," echoed several other Twitter users as #CecilTheLion became last week's hashtag du jour. Stoning, torture, even being fed to the lions were further suggestions posted online as Palmer went to ground and Zimbabwe called for his extradition.

"Public shaming through social media is clearly a way that people in our society informally 'punish' those who violate the rules, even if the rules of our society aren't law," said Lori Brown, a sociology professor at Meredith College in North Carolina.

"It is similar to the public stocks and just like that kind of punishment, some are content with simply ridiculing the person, but others may want to throw things or even harm this person."

Some have found themselves in the cross hairs of social media shaming by discovering the hard way that humour doesn't travel well in a 144-character tweet.

"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get Aids. Just kidding. I'm white!" New York PR executive Justine Sacco famously quipped before flying off to Cape Town in 2013.

Many of her 174 Twitter followers were friends, and she clearly identified herself in her online profile as a "troublemaker on the side" with a "loud laugh."

But Sacco instantly became a global laughing stock, awash in a tsunami of blistering tweets that only intensified when she got off her 11-hour flight, found what was happening and apologised.

Even businesses and charities jumped on the bandwagon. By one estimate Google made up to US$468,000 off the internet traffic it generated, according to British writer Jon Ronson.

"You can lead a good ethical life, but some bad phraseology in a tweet can overwhelm it all," said Ronson, author of , in June.

In a sense, the internet has stirred a revival of medieval-style public humiliation, a fixture of puritanical 17th century American colonial life.

Vanitha Swaminathan, a University of Pittsburgh marketing professor, said the reputational consequences of online shaming can be so severe it may look out of proportion to whatever led to it.

"On the flip side, the speed at which these transgressions achieve prominence and fade away suggests that while social media backlash may seem very harsh, social media's attention span is also narrow," she said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Social media is the modern village stocks
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