A South Korean study suggests that support for online vigilantism is driven as much by emotional rewards and the wish to signal moral virtue as by a genuine belief in justice. Researchers Dosun Kim and Yeon Soo Kim of Dongguk University in Seoul led the work, which surveyed 1,000 adults to explore why people back digital public shaming and related practices.
Online vigilantism encompasses actions taken by internet users to expose, criticise or punish individuals perceived to have breached social norms, often outside formal legal systems. Public shaming, group harassment and doxxing—the publication of private or identifying information without consent—are common, with digital platforms offering anonymity and vast audiences that can spread consequences rapidly and permanently, sometimes resulting in a form of “social death” for the target.
The study aimed to probe the psychological traits underpinning these behaviours, moving beyond the legal and structural analyses that have dominated prior work. The researchers sought to understand how emotional and motivational factors shape people’s subjective judgments about the effectiveness of online justice when watching or taking part in online shaming.
Two psychological concepts were central to the investigation: schadenfreude and moral grandstanding. Schadenfreude describes pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune, a feeling that can manifest online as enjoyment of a public figure’s downfall. Moral grandstanding refers to using moral arguments principally to boost one’s social status or self-image in public discourse.
Within moral grandstanding, the study distinguished two forms: prestige-seeking grandstanding, where individuals seek recognition as morally sensitive in others’ eyes, and dominance-seeking grandstanding, where people aim to exert influence, assert authority, or shame those who disagree with them.
The researchers recruited a representative sample of 1,000 South Korean adults and asked about experiences with internet justice, feelings of schadenfreude, and tendencies toward both prestige-seeking and dominance-seeking moral grandstanding. Participants also rated how effective they believed internet vigilantism was at achieving social justice, deterring bad behaviour, and compensating for gaps in the formal legal system.
Participants were categorised into three groups. Non-participants reported no experience with online vigilantism, passive participants had merely viewed or searched for content criticising rule-breakers, and active participants had taken direct action such as sharing personal information, posting accusatory comments or creating critical posts.
Across the groups, active participants showed significantly higher levels of schadenfreude, prestige-seeking grandstanding and belief in the effectiveness of online vigilantism than the other two groups. Non-participants scored the lowest on schadenfreude and perceived effectiveness, but their prestige-seeking grandstanding was slightly higher than that of passive participants. In contrast, dominance-seeking grandstanding followed a different pattern, with passive participants scoring lower than both active participants and non-participants.
When examined within each group, distinct patterns emerged. Among active participants, higher schadenfreude and prestige-seeking grandstanding correlated with a stronger belief that online vigilantism is effective. Passive participants showed a similar association: greater schadenfreude and prestige-seeking grandstanding aligned with viewing online vigilantism as a successful tool.
By contrast, in the non-participant group, schadenfreude remained linked to beliefs about effectiveness, but dominance-seeking grandstanding was associated with support for online vigilantism. The researchers suggest that some people who do not engage directly may still favour internet justice as a symbolic punishment that affirms their moral superiority from a safe distance.
Overall, the researchers noted that the interaction across the three groups was not statistically significant. However, exploratory analyses indicated that the link between dominance-seeking grandstanding and support for online vigilantism appeared stronger among non-participants, a finding the team cautioned requires further investigation because the non-participant group was relatively small.
The study relies on cross-sectional, self-reported data collected at a single time point, so it cannot establish causality. It also measures perceived rather than actual effectiveness, and the South Korean sample may not generalise to other cultural contexts or social media environments.
Future work could employ experimental designs or longitudinal tracking to better clarify how these psychological traits interact with digital shaming over time. Researchers also suggested examining whether similar patterns emerge across different legal frameworks and social media networks to understand internet justice on a broader scale.
The study, “Perceived effectiveness of online vigilantism: The role of schadenfreude and moral grandstanding,” was authored by Dosun Kim and Yeon Soo Kim. It advances understanding of the motives underpinning online vigilantism and the subjective beliefs about its capacity to deliver social justice.
