VISUAL RHETORIC OF CANCELLATION: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL CALLOUT DESIGN AND PUBLIC OPINION FORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Abstract

Cancel culture is a contemporary digital cultural phenomenon that operates not only through language but also, and centrally, through visual communication: it functions via the production, circulation, and consumption of visual artifacts, including memes, callout graphics, accusatory infographics, and provocative typographic designs disseminated massively across social media platforms. This article examines how elements of visual communication design, particularly visual rhetoric, semiotics, and typographic aesthetics, function as instruments of digital public opinion formation within the context of cancel culture. Employing a visual semiotic approach grounded in Roland Barthes's framework of denotation, connotation, and myth, combined with Foss's visual rhetoric theory and multimodal design analysis, this study analyzes 48 visual artifacts associated with viral cancel culture cases on Twitter/X and Instagram during the period 2023 to 2025. Findings demonstrate that visual design in cancel culture operates through three primary mechanisms: (1) the visual construction of moral identity through the strategic selection of typography, color schemes, and compositional arrangements that encode judgment; (2) rhetorical amplification through meme aesthetics that exploit shared visual cultural codes; and (3) the naturalization of group ideology through visual myth mechanisms that render cancellation narratives as self-evident truths. This article contributes to the discourse of visual communication design concerning the relationship between digital aesthetics, meaning production, and social power within contemporary media ecosystems.