The Cancelling of Margaux Dietz : How Public Relations Practitioners Reflects on the Intersection of Influencer Marketing and Cancel Culture in Sweden

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to investigate Swedish PR practitioners’ assessments of and proposed response strategies to the cancellation case of Swedish social media influencer Margaux Dietz. Multiple organisations cancelled their collaborations with Dietz in November 2022 following a criticized video scandal. Furthermore, the thesis aims to examine Swedish PR practitioners’ reasoning of risk in their work with influencer marketing, considering a present “cancel culture”. Two research questions are posed: RQ1: How do Swedish PR practitioners reflect on the cancellation of Swedish social media influencer Margaux Dietz in November 2022, and how would they have handled the situation? RQ2: In what ways do Swedish PR practitioners reflect on the risks of working with influencer marketing in relation to cancel culture? With a sample of nine participants, semi structured interviews were conducted with PR practitioners active in Stockholm, Sweden. The interviews were first analysed through a qualitative content analysis, and thereafter a theoretical framework, consisting of the notion cancel culture as defined by Clark (2020) and Ng (2020), as well as Benoit’s (2015) Image Repair Theory, was applied. Findings suggested that there were five themes present in the interviewees’ responses, (1) Risks of Influencer Marketing, (2) Cancel Culture as Positive, (3) Cancel Culture as Negative, (4) Managing Being Cancelled and (5) Uncertainty. The main conclusions indicated that there was a general uncertainty in practitioners concerning their opinions of the Dietz case. Interviewees both expressed an understanding for and questioned the organisations’ actions in the case, however most would consider cancelling collaborations during similar circumstances themselves due to a need to protect their brands. There was a common reasoning that cancel culture could be limiting and even harmful, and interviewees perceived risks in their work with influencer marketing relating to a loss of control, the human factor and cancel culture.