“In the Name of Cat Love”: Cyberbullying and Marginalization in Social Media Communities

Imagine a vibrant online community dedicated to the adorable Scottish Fold and Straight cats. Members eagerly share pictures, exchange tips, and celebrate their feline companions, creating an environment filled with warmth and shared affection. However, beneath this surface of fluffy cuteness, a darker reality lurks. Every time a member expresses opinions differing from those of the majority, particularly from the group’s founders and administrators (considered de facto leaders in the group), they get abusively bombarded with insults, ostracized, and silenced. This scenario exemplifies the insidious nature of social media communities (Kozinets, 2002). Groups launched to foster connections (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Cova, 1997), a sense of belonging, and validation (Taylor, 2020) that can morph into breeding grounds where the dynamics of the “Spiral of Silence theory”, as conceptualized by Noelle-Neumann (1974), get enacted (Chen, 2018; Connolly & Connolly, 2012; Sohn, 2022). This theory, originally exemplified for mass media, suggests that people tend to self-censor when they perceive their views differ from those of authoritative personalities or the majority, fearing isolation (Noelle-Neumann, 1974). This mechanism consequently reduces informative discussions and exchange by limiting the clash of diverse perspectives and leads to the solidification of a dominant narrative, not necessarily correct and valid, within a specific social group (i.e., country, social community). So far, research has demonstrated that the spiral of silence on social media communities is primarily driven by the frustration of those members not receiving interactions with their contents (Chen, 2018; Sohn, 2022), who to limit this negative emotional state, stop interacting with the group. However, research has partially overlooked that often behind these mechanisms of selective-interaction, lies an act of cyberbullying (Connolly & Connolly, 2012), particularly its form of marginalization. Cyberbullying involves aggressive or passive-aggressive attacks by community members toward a victim (Dennehy et al.,2020), and marginalization is a specific form where victims are overpowered and then isolated from other members within the group (Gatzweiler & Baumüller, 2014). Consequently, the spiral of silence gets activated by the victim first to stop the abusive attacks and then to heal from the emotional suffering caused by exclusion. Despite the escalating emergence of cyberbullying online and the consequent coercion of voices in techno-mediated groups, there is a paucity of studies exploring the mechanisms and effects of the activation of the spiral of silence in social media communities when caused by bullying, particularly marginalization. This chapter delves into the nuanced and often troubling dynamics of social media interactions, where the potential for connection with like-minded individ- uals can transform into bullying, exclusion, silencing, and manipulation. Drawing on a specific case study of a Facebook community dedicated to Scottish Fold and Straight (SFS) cat enthusiasts, we explore through a netnographic research (Kozinets, 2020) how cyberbullying and marginalization are perpetuated within social media communities. We then highlight how these acts provoke the domino effects of the spiral of silence, specifically concluding by showing how the silencing diminishes the original intents of connections of social media and manipulates thoughts of those members who witnessed the cyberbullying act. In our conclusion, we also discuss how those silencing dynamics are strategically used to foster and perpetuate market dynamics based on exclusion. Our exploration begins with a thorough review of existing literature on the spiral of silence in the context of social media. We then provide an overview of the intricacies of cyberbullying, its forms, and mechanisms, with a specific focus on marginalization and how they activate the spiral of silence. Finally, we delve into the netnographic analysis of the Facebook SFS community, revealing its transformation from a heaven for cat lovers into a site rife with marginalization, silencing, manipulation, and market exclusion. With this chapter, we contribute to the understanding of how people interact in contemporary society, especially in the networked environment of social media where the sense of communitas seems to be lost in favor of supporting technocapitalist power dynamics. Additionally, we advance the literature on the spiral of silence by demonstrating how it is perpetuated through acts of cyberbullying and how one of its effects can be the induction of specific thoughts and potentially consumption behaviors.