Cancel Culture and Public Administration

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Tyler Sova
July 29, 2020

Anyone on social media, especially Twitter, understands the power of Cancel Culture. If you haven’t heard of cancel culture, it’s an act of “cancelling” a person, using shame and boycotts to try and erase their influence and accomplishments, usually because they’ve done something the crowd finds offensive, wrong or in poor taste. It feels like what Alexis de Tocqueville described as the, “Tyranny of the majority,” wherein minority opinions are cancelled irrespective of their legitimacy. Cancel culture disguises itself as a form of accountability, but in reality it is democratized public shaming. Those looking to cancel someone rarely have all the facts or information. It’s already having consequences in the real world. The majority of cancel culture is perpetrated by random internet mobs, levied against celebrities and other public figures. With unrest and multiple social movements sweeping across the country, cancel culture has come for public administrators and elected officials. This phenomenon creates a uniquely new problem for public administration. 

Public administration is a complex science. It includes practical challenges, such as drainage systems, funding capital projects, codes and regulations, etc. It also comes with theoretical challenges like managing human behavior, incentivizing and discentivizing actions, law, public order, etc. It is where the theoretical challenges meet the frustrating intricacies of the human brain. Issues, like policing, are deeply complicated and call for intense discussion, preferably with a healthy mixture of elected officials, citizens, professionals and experts. With cancel culture making significant inroads in society, that is rarely feasible. 

There is simply information overload. The human brain can generally only handle two complex tasks simultaneously. You can hold many ideas at once, but with the amount of information, and the speed of the news cycle, keeping up and creating creative solutions is near impossible for the average person. With the current national issues of COVID-19, policing, race relations and an upcoming election, there is too much information and not enough action, which is creating public outrage across the country. When you cannot process all this distressing information at once, people develop feelings of stress and of being overwhelmed. Current events used to be a way to stay in-the-know, but news has become gamified by using negative news articles to keep people clicking and watching. “Negativity bias” plays into this bad news cycle. Our brains react to negative stimuli more strongly than we do to positive or neutral stimuli. Information overload and negativity bias have created the perfect storm for those in government and in the nonprofit world. Citizens, often with little understanding of the entire issue, have begun demanding major changes with little interest in outcome. 

The George Floyd case, a case study in epically poor policing, provides an illustration into the harmful nature of cancel culture. The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, was booed out of a large demonstration. Frey decided that he did not support total abolition of the police force, and was shamed until he left the area. This is not to argue that major reform is not needed; it clearly is. The point is that Frey was there in support of the demonstration and his constituents (he actually ran on the promise of police reform), and his refusal to abide by a narrow definition of reform cost him his platform, and possibly in the future, his job. Public administration is the right place to make change, but radical changes without consideration of the after-effects is detrimental to governing. Unconstructive criticism does not bring about the sweeping changes people are demanding. 

On an issue like police reform, we need expert research, veteran administrators and constructive citizen engagement. It is the black and white style of cancel culture that creates derision. Either you support the full abolition of the police, or you fully support the police and all their wrongdoings. One cannot govern under these binary conditions. The extreme pendulum has swung back to the center, and instead a large portion of the Defund the Police movement are asking for some police funds to be allocated to other government agencies and nonprofits who could be better suited to handle situations. This includes proposals like having social workers deal with domestic issues, having healthcare workers deal with people suffering from drug addictions, using therapists instead of police for those considering suicide, etc. This sort of nuanced thinking is being stifled by the false binary choices being provided. 

Cancel culture creates an atmosphere of fear. We need our public officials to not act out of social fear, but act out of societal need. Can we make policing more fair? Can we treat our most vulnerable better? Can we make systematic changes to make life more equitable? Yes, yes and yes. These changes come about with public pressure and the willingness to explore new ideas. I ask those in public administration to reject cancel culture and to embrace the values of constructive criticism, being open to change and the hope of new ideas.

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Author: Tyler Sova received his Bachelors in Finance from Duquesne University and his MPA from West Chester University. He is a Financial Management Analyst for the Federal Government and involved with the Pennsylvania Keystone Chapter of ASPA. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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