Counter-Stigmatization in the Digital Age: The Case of the Sex Tech Award Incident

Scholars have shown considerable interest in how organizations manage stigma when powerful actors discredit them and their products. However, research has paid less attention to how organizations might deflect stigma back onto their stigmatizers. This is a distinct possibility in today’s digital age, where social evaluations are rapidly disseminated, emotionally charged, and widely distributed. We investigate this dynamic in this paper, focusing on how stigmatized organizations can counter-stigmatize their stigmatizers despite an imbalance of power. Drawing on a longitudinal case of a sex tech start-up whose innovation award was rescinded by a major technology trade show, we identify the triggers, mechanisms, and outcomes of counter-stigmatization. The model that we offer contributes to research on stigmatization as a process. Specifically, we theorize how digitally mediated counter-stigmatization reshapes power dynamics, how event and core stigma become intertwined within this process, and how emotions drive counter-stigmatization.