At the world’s largest tech show in 2019, a small startup made big waves. Lora DiCarlo, a women-led sex-tech company, won a prestigious innovation award from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), only to have it revoked by the organizers who deemed the product “immoral, obscene, and profane”. Instead of quietly accepting the stigma, the startup fought back. The award’s revocation elicited intense emotional responses online, sparking moral outrage against CES organizers, with accusations of sexism and double standards. The stigmatization boomeranged back onto the stigmatizer, resulting in CES reinstating Lora DiCarlo’s award and changing participation rules for the entire sex tech category.
This incident reveals a new response to stigmatization in our digital era. When stigmatized actors refuse to stay silent, they can redirect stigma onto the stigmatizers who tried to marginalize them. Based on our paper “Counter-Stigmatization in the Digital Age: The Case of the SexTech Award Incident,” published in the Journal of Management Studies, we unpack “counter-stigmatization”—what it is, how it works, and why it is emerging in the digital age.
What is Counter-Stigmatization?
Counter-stigmatization happens when a stigmatized person or organization pushes back and successfully brands the accuser as the true wrongdoer. It is the fired employee who exposes corporate wrongdoing; the disabled passenger who mobilizes online communities after airline mistreatment; the controversial startup that transforms its censors into the villains. Crucially, this isn’t done in a vacuum. In our paper, we define counter-stigmatization as “process in which targets of stigma, together with supportive audiences, successfully redirect stigmatization towards their stigmatizers”. The target doesn’t just defend itself—it launches a moral counter-offensive. Crucially, we note the importance of digital technologies in enabling this process.
How Counter-Stigmatization Works
Our research highlights a three-part process:
1. Prefiguration of Evidence: The stigmatized party collects and curates “digital evidence” of injustice – emails, photos, screenshots showing they were wronged. Digital platforms and modes of communication make this easier than ever.
2. Mobilization of Audiences: They mobilize supporters through press releases, social media campaigns, and hashtags to generate outrage and rally empathy. The goal is to redistribute power by enlisting the crowd. When multiple voices join in, a once-powerless target suddenly has formidable force behind it.
3. Emotionally-Charged Moral Backlash: With evidence and audience attention, the stage is set for a stigma boomerang. Supporters direct moral condemnation at the original stigmatizer, accusing them of wrongdoing, hypocrisy, or injustice. This often forces the stigmatizer to backpedal or make amends.
Why is Counter-Stigmatization Emerging in the Digital Age?
Digital media amplifies everything. In the past, stigmatized actors had few ways to challenge gatekeepers who labeled them deviant or unworthy. Their appeals were invisible, and often filtered or silenced by institutions controlling the media. Today, stigmatized organizations “use digital affordances to challenge stigmatization, mobilize supportive audiences, and redistribute evaluative power” in unprecedented ways. A single tweet can ignite boycotts. Social networks, digital news platforms, viral hashtags, and targeted mentions allow small players to make significant noise. Digital technologies fundamentally change power distribution.
Digital controversies leave rich, real-time traces offering windows into how counter-stigmatization unfolds. Our dataset included tweets, emails (made public by Lora DiCarlo), blog entries, and media articles—hundreds of pages produced during the controversy’s peak—letting us trace how narratives were framed, emotions spread, and public judgment shaped outcomes.
Strategic Implications
Our findings have concrete implications for how organizations can manage stigma and respond to moral challenge. Traditionally, the playbook has been stigma management: hide the controversial aspect and lay low. Those defensive tactics are sometimes necessary. But counter-stigmatization can be an opportunity. Paradoxically, what begins as confrontation may evolve into dialogue, collaboration, or systemic change, because of the moral pressure it generates.
Below are dual strategy lessons for individuals and organizations navigating counter-stigmatization in the digital arena.
For the Stigmatized: Leading Counter-Stigmatization
- Timing. Time your attack strategically. Try and use the strengths of the stigmatizers against them.
- Activate Values. Align your case with widely shared values. The backlash will most likely boomerang if the public perceives injustice. Frame conflict around principles (equity, freedom, safety) being undermined.
- Activate Allies Strategically. Rally audiences and stakeholders. Give them reason to stand for something bigger than defending you. Use physical and digital spaces in combination.
- Leverage Evidence and Emotions. Documents demonstrating procedural unfairness or hypocrisy strengthen your case. However, facts alone don’t drive movements. Counter-stigmatization works when tapping moral emotions—especially anger at injustice and empathy for those harmed. When people express these emotions together, it’s a powerful catalyst for collective engagement.
- Reset Terms. The endgame is recalibration, not revenge. If your pushback succeeds, stay open to conversation. Use leverage to build better engagement terms for your community and show you’re constructive, not just disruptive.
For the Stigmatizer Turned Target: Surviving Counter-Stigmatization
- Understand Your New Situation. You are no longer just a powerful organization but yet another actor in someone else’s story, possibly the villain. Your past actions will be reread through this lens. Recognize that public perception has shifted and old scripts may no longer work.
- Avoid Confirming Power Asymmetry. Legal language or corporate ambiguity may protect liability but inflames public skepticism. If you acted from a defensible position, articulate it ethically in plain language. If you didn’t, own the harm clearly and show moral learning. Don’t suppress, censor, or threaten—that proves critics right.
- Invest in Dialogue and Repair. Invite critics, affected communities, or third parties into meaningful engagement. Demonstrate openness to change. A reputational risk can become a moment of reorientation. Rebuild around values that matter to stakeholders, even if that means rethinking who those stakeholders are.
The Bottom Line
Counterstigmatization works like strategic jujitsu—it takes an unjust criticism and transforms a liability into a source of strength. Organizations can actively reverse unfair perceptions imposed on them by others and stigma can rebound onto the organizations that initiate it. For managers, executives, regulators, and policymakers, this means that moral authority cannot be assumed. Actions such as categorical exclusions and opaque decision making can trigger rapid and public reversals.
The practical lesson is that counter-stigmatization is a way for marginalized groups to renegotiate the terms of evaluation. Leaders who recognize this dynamic early can adjust their practices before a controversy escalates. Organizations that respond with measured reform rather than defensive posture are more likely to retain credibility when their decisions come under scrutiny.
