The Social Construction of a Scapegoat: Deviation, Sacrifice, Repression and Heroism in Resistance

There are numerous concerns about the impact of illegal file sharing on creative industries. In particular, much has been said to establish a direct relationship between the so-called "piracy" and the unprecedented crisis in music and movie industries. This is one illustration of a scapegoating mechanism, in the sense that one group (internet users and more specifically pirates) is held responsible for all the difficulties of another group (society as a whole). However, little is known in the literature about the role of a scapegoat in an industry. Based on the work of the French philosopher R. Girard, this paper is an attempt to analyze the scapegoating process. In particular, we analyze the discursive mechanisms that have socially constructed the "pirate" and we explore the dynamics this social construction implies. Our method relies on critical discourse analysis based on corpus linguistics and on qualitative interviews. Our results show the evolution of the values around the scapegoat, constructed as a resistant, a deviant, an outlaw, but also, to a certain extent as a hero. We emphasize a forgotten dimension that is important for critical studies: the need of an industry in crisis to sacrifice a group to externalize tensions and violence and in so doing "purify" the institutional order. In this process, the hybrid perception of the scapegoat, as a hero and an outlaw is explained as a necessary ambiguity to solve the coexistence of antagonistic values.