“Facebook’s about to know, Karen”
Mobilising social media to sanction public conduct
This paper explores the social action of sanctioning an interlocutor’s conduct in public spaces through social
media. Using membership categorisation analysis (
Hester and Eglin 1997), we examine
how, in offline face-to-face disputes filmed by one party, interactants deploy the name ‘Karen’ to sanction someone and threaten
the transposition of the recording onto social media to impose accountability to the public at large. Our findings show how
sanctioning through categorising an individual as a ‘Karen’ is interactionally achieved through framing conduct as entitled or
otherwise problematic, distinguishing
in-situ production of ‘Karen’ from a delivery that is perceptually
unavailable to an interlocutor. We explore how social media functions as a resource to shape the ongoing encounter by orienting to
the camera, and thus the online audience, as an external authority.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Accountability, sanctioning and degrading in social interaction
- 3.‘Karen’ as a membership category
- 4.Data and method
- 5.Analysis
- 5.1
In-situ categorisation available and conflictual to the interlocutor
- 5.2Categorisation in absentia
- 6.Discussion and conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Note
-
References