Vigilantism, public shaming, and social media hegemony: The role of digital-networked images in humiliation and sociopolitical control

Digital-networked images of torture, abuse, and humiliation are increasingly used by nonstate agents to form online communities based upon prejudice and bigotry and/or to propagate violent vigilante justice. This article discusses the circulation, impact, and permanence of digital-networked images that perpetuate nonstate hegemony and function as mechanisms for exercising power, disciplinary force, and social control reminiscent of Foucauldian theories of power-knowledge and governmentality.