anger as a political emotion bournemouth

Anger as a Political Emotion

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ) Cardiff University

Politics, Emotion and Protest WorkshopBournemouth University, July 9-10, 2015

Emotions, media and politics Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (in preparation). Emotions,

Media and Politics. London and New York: Polity Press.

The role of emotion in mediated public participation

Exploring disjuncture between liberal democratic theory and lived practices of citizenship

Work in media studies needs to take affective elements of communication into consideration.

Emotion as force and resource for political life

Anger as political emotion Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

Emotions, media and politics


Emotions, media and politics Rise of emotional culture

‘Therapy talk’ ‘Emotional intelligence’

The “affective turn” across humanities and social sciences (e.g. Clough and Halley, 2007; Thompson and Hoggett, 2012)

The “emotional deficit in political communication” (Richards, 2004)

Scholarly debates on the increasingly close relationship between politics and popular culture


Today: Anger as a political emotion

Focus on specific emotion: Anger Liberal democratic theory:

Structuring tension between emotion and reason Fear of irrationality, anger and

violence The construction of anger in

media coverage of protest Challenging dominant discourses:

Peaceful and creative protest Affective news streams


Liberal democratic theory: Reason vs emotion

Liberal democratic theory: Celebrates rational, dispassionate, impartial, disembodied and informed citizen Emotional citizens make for bad subjects “Being emotional about politics is generally

associated with psychological distraction, distortion, extremity and unreasonableness. Thus, the conventional view is that our capacity for and willingness to engage in reasoned consideration is too often overwhelmed by emotion to the detriment of sound political judgment. As a result, theories of democratic practice proclaim the importance of protesting against the dangers of human passion and political faction by building up institutions, rules and procedures – all intended to protect us from our emotional selves.” (Marcus, Neuman and MacKuen, 2000 p. 2)


Reason and emotion: Structuring tension in political life


Polarisation of reason and emotion

Tension between the need to involve citizens as rational and constructive participants in the political process and the need to control the irrational passions of the “common people.”

Polarisation of reason and emotion: E.g. Karl Popper, Open Society:

“[If] a dispute arises, then this means that those more constructive emotions and passions which might in principle help to get over it, reverence, love, devotion to a common cause, etc., have shown themselves to be incapable of solving the problem…There are only two solutions: one is the use of emotion, and ultimately of violence, and the other is the use of reason, of impartiality, of reasonable compromise”


Structuring tension of citizenship

Anger as collective emotion: Uncontrollable, aggressive and violent

Affect control structures: Central to the “civilising process” (Elias, 2000) Control of aggression

No “society can survive without a channeling of individual drives and affects, without a very specific control of individual behavior” (Elias, 2000: 443).


Anger as political emotion Political participation motivated by

emotional engagement “Politics requires passion, in the

sense of intense involvement, even if liberal democratic theory tends to cling to visions of pure rationality” (Dahlgren, 2009, p. 8).

Group-based feelings of anger about collective injustices as an important motivational force in collective protest participation (e.g., Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2006).


Anger as a political emotion

Gould (2001): Political empowerment takes place

through the labelling of emotions E.g. lesbians “feeling bad”

collectively relabelling their emotion as anger

Public and collective emotion which empowers the angry group to take action


Anger as a political emotion: Social movements theory

Gould (2012) on Act Up: Rage bestowed authenticity

“Where anger had made participants feel like they were part of something vibrant and larger than themselves, despair made people feel alone, guilt-ridden sad and bad, and inclined to leave the movement”


Dominant framework: Protest as disruptive, angry and violent


Constructing anger and protest “An anti-government protest took place last week outside the

central bank and there was anger among critics of the government over the appointment of a state prosecutor thought to have close links to Russia.” (Sunday Times, July 5) (Ukraine)

“At a demonstration calling for a "yes" vote, journalists and camera crew deemed to be left-wing were threatened with violence. There has been growing anger among some Greeks over the coverage of the referendum, according to German news website Focus, which one of the main gripes being that private broadcasters are too biased in their reporting” (Telegraph, July 5) (Greece)

“Michael Gove may have got off to a sure start but he won't escape the anger of the profession over legal aid cuts. Protests across the country got under way yesterday over the 8.7 per cent cut in fees - the second in 15 months. “ (The Times, July 2) (UK)


Occupy movement

Embodying the dissatisfaction of the “99%” over corporate greed

BUT: Deliberatively constructs itself as strategically non-violent, horizontal, egalitarian and creative


Umbrella revolution


Complicating accounts of emotion: Affective news streams

“We characterized the news streams we studied as affective, because they blended opinion, fact, and emotion into expressions uttered in anticipation of events that had not yet attained recognition through mainstream media.” (Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira, 2012: 279).

“In some ways, Twitter plays a part similar to the role music used to play for movements—by enabling affective attunement with the movement itself. Songs that reflect the general aspirations of a movement allow publics and crowds to feel, with greater intensity, the meaning of the movement for themselves. Affective attunement permits people to feel and thus locate their own place in politics. Antagonistic content injections interrupted the affective harmony of #ows, creating an effect similar to that of noise interrupting a song.” (Papacharissi, 2014: kindle location 1852).


Conclusion

Emotion historically denigrated in media and communication research

The need to take emotion seriously Closer examination of anger in

political life and protest History of liberal thought: Fear of

emotion as destructive and dangerous Emotionality equated with anger


Conclusion

Anger as key resource and mobilising factor for social movements

Protests constructed negatively due to fear of uncontrolled anger

Challenge of dominant discourse: Peaceful protest

Complex “affective news streams” Reclaiming strategic use of anger