Keynote speech given at the "Politics, Emotion and Protest" Workshop, Bournemouth University, July 9-10, 2015

1. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)
Cardiff University
Politics, Emotion and Protest Workshop
Bournemouth University, July 9-10, 2015

2.  Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (in preparation). Emotions, Media and
Politics. London and NewYork: 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

3. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

4.  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
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

5.  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
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

6.  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)
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

7. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

8.  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”
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

9.  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 KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

10. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

11.  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 political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

12.  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 political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

13.  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”
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

14. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

15. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

16. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

17.  “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.”
(SundayTimes, 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)
 “MichaelGove 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. “ (TheTimes, July 2) (UK)
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

18. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

19. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

20.  Embodying the
dissatisfaction of the
“99%” over corporate
greed
 BUT: Deliberatively
constructs itself as
strategically non-violent,
horizontal, egalitarian
and creative
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

21. Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

22.  “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).
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

23.  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
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)

24.  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
Anger as political emotion KarinWahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ)