Salem to Social Media: Tracing the Parallels Between Historical and Digital Blame

This chapter explores the parallels between early modern European witch hunts and contemporary online shaming campaigns, arguing that the comparison is politically valuable in uncovering how power, fear, and social control operate in tandem. The chapter outlines three key parallels: (1) both forms of mass blame misrepresent structural causes of unrest through the targeting of individual “bad actors”; (2) both are often incited or leveraged by charismatic elite figures as a means of sowing division among and aggression toward vulnerable groups; and (3) both function as mechanisms of social bonding, using public condemnation to forge group identity. At the same time, the chapter attends to key divergences, including the vastly different scale, structure, and rhetorical possibilities of digital space, and the recent co-optation and commodification of “witch” identity. Taken together, these comparisons shed light on the moral complexity of digital shaming and the need for more ethically reflective approaches to justice online.