Cybersmile has launched a new campaign, “Modern Witch Hunt”, to tackle and raise awareness of cancel culture and the effects of mob harassment on social media.
The campaign centres around a hard-hitting short film created in partnership with Chromista, the production company of Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Ted Robbins, Adina Birnbaum, and Scott Franklin. The video was directed by Emmy Award nominee and Venice Film Festival winner Eliza McNitt.
“Modern Witch Hunt” highlights how historical mob justice has now been ‘upgraded’ from 17th-century witch hunts with burning torches in Salem to online mobs weaponizing the power of the internet and social media to destroy people’s lives.
The campaign hopes to encourage social media users to think for themselves and not just post things because others are. It also shows how to choose more productive ways of engaging online. It is being supported by a forty-second cinema spot playing at theatres across the UK in partnership with Pearl & Dean – a cinema advertising company representing a wide range of cinemas with multiplex chains at landmark locations.
Sadly, mob harassment and cancel culture are prevalent on all social media sites and are often mistaken for activism. Barack Obama. The former President recently shared his concerns about the issue, highlighting the difference between activism and empty public call-outs, “There is this sense sometimes of ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,’ and that’s enough. Like ??if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong word or verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, man, you see how woke I was. I called you out. That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change.” Adding, “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get very far, that’s easy to do.”
Modern Witch Trials was created as part of a partnership with JOAN Creative, an independent agency founded in New York back in 2016 with their first London shop opening in 2023.
The campaign message for more productive use of social media echoes similar calls from researchers who have previously examined online mob harassment and vigilante-type behaviours
You can find out more about the work Cybersmile does to make the internet a safer place for all who use it here!