In the introduction, Ronson relates a story of an automated parody Twitter handle, @jon_ronson. The account posts a smattering of food and party-related tweets, none of which are related to the content of the actual Jon Ronson's life. This leads to Ronson asking the bot's creators for its removal, as he believes it to be a spambot. The creators of the account call it an "infomorph", and decline Ronson's request, but eventually agree to meet in person with the author. Ronson then records the interaction and posts it on YouTube, and is surprised when the reaction is overwhelmingly in his favor. The creators of the spambot, in the wake of the public shame elicited by Ronson's video, finally agree to retire the counterfeit Twitter account. This experience leads Ronson to re-evaluate other public shamings he's participated in, and the effects these shaming events have on both the shamed and the shaming. He begins by interviewing prominent victims of public shaming on the Internet, and the instigators of these shaming events. His first subject is Jonah Lehrer, disgraced popular science journalist for The New Yorker and author of the book . Ronson also interviews the journalist who exposed Lehrer's plagiarism and misuse of quotes—Michael C. Moynihan. In the days preceding Lehrer's televised apology at a conference held by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ronson interviews the disgraced journalist while hiking through Runyon Canyon. The public humiliation inherent to Lehrer's apology speech is exacerbated by a large projector screen hung behind his speaking podium and a small television screen viewable to Lehrer, which both display a live Twitter feed of any individual tweeting with the hashtag "infoneeds". A small controversy brews as a result of Lehrer's speech's content, which some describe as arrogant and lacking sincerity. Ronson, who had recently interviewed Lehrer and was asked for thoughts on a draft, admits to having decided not to say to Lehrer before he made the speech that he found it unconvincing. Further social media upheaval occurs when it is discovered that the Knight Foundation paid Lehrer $20,000 for his apology speech. His next subject is Adria Richards, who publicised the faces of two tech developers at PyCon who were whispering sexual jokes to one another during a lecture on facilitating women's involvement in tech. One of the developers publicly attributed his resultant dismissal from his job on Richards' publicizing his behavior, which he felt had been harmless. His account of events led to an online backlash against Richards that in turn led to Richards herself being let go from her job. Ronson reveals that at time of writing, both men had been able to find new positions in tech in the following months, whereas Richards remained unemployed and continued to face online threats and harassment in relation to the incident. Richards says she believes Hank is responsible for knowingly instigating her sustained harassment and continued unemployment, due to his publicly blaming her for his own firing, but Ronson ultimately suggests he feels Richards is primarily at fault. Other sections in the book include interviews and coverage of the Justine Sacco incident and a long section about how people can "hide" their negative Google Search results via legal and creative IT mechanics.
Reception
Response to So You've Been Publicly Shamed has been mostly positive. As of August 2016, the book has an average score of 3.9/5 on Goodreads with almost 20,000 total ratings. Jennifer Latson of The Boston Globe remarked that "Ronson manages to be at once academic and entertaining." Matthew Hutson from The Wall Street Journal stated that the book "raises interesting questions about righteousness, reputation and conformity" but lamented that Ronson's "thoughts remain disconnected musings rather than cohering as a calculus of public shaming's costs and benefits".
