Social media suspensions as dignity takings: Users’ personal loss in “account bombing”

Abstract

Moving beyond the publicness-oriented perspective in Internet censorship studies, this article directs attention to censorship’s consequences for users’ personal lives. We examine “account bombing” in China, a phenomenon where social media platforms suspend user accounts permanently, and we focus on the loss of the “victims.” Notably, people commonly use social media accounts as personal archives that store their digital traces, from which they obtain a sense of self, and perceive the accounts as their private property. We use the dignity takings theory to illustrate the dual harm the victims suffer in account bombing: Censorship deprives them of both their social media accounts and dignity. We propose the concept of “dual dehumanization” to explain the dignity violation in account bombing, as this arbitrary conduct not only occurs in a dehumanizing manner, but also destroys users’ identity work and community ties.