Kassandra Rothenstadt
from the time that the hashtag # occupywallstreet was registered on June 9, 2011 to the first demonstration on September 17, 2011.
The emergence of Occupy Wall Street“ was characterized by a tortuous development”( Gerbaudo, p. 102) in which social media failed to turn sympathizers into actual participants, being“ only partly responsible used as a means for a choreography of assembly, setting the scene for public protest”( p. 102). Consequently, while these demonstrations of political indignation and discontent have prompted a crucial debate on the nature and potentiality of an alternative civilization, these protests have also prompted another debate – on the nature as well as the social and political potentialities of the Internet. As‘‘ online’’ mobilization often builds on‘ offline’ interactions between the technically literate and socially capable individuals, new repertoires of contention enabled by digital technology seemed to reveal limited empowerment capabilities. This prompted a return to established views that traditional protest skills and resources, together with political and social capital, remain central to analysing political mobilization over digital networks. In addition, because in the contemporary network society( Castells 1996), power is multidimensional and also organized around networks, the liberating promises seem to be progressively hindered as the same technology is increasingly used for propaganda, surveillance, censorship and control. These developments suggested a shifting of power landscapes once again towards the power structure. Therefore, amidst increasing doubts about the Internet and new media as tools of liberation and democratisation, and the tendency of institutionalised powers to use any available medium to exert their influence as a means of manipulation and social control, the connect between emotion and action within the context of‘ online’ political activism must be readdressed.
However, In order to understand digital activism and the role of emotion in this process within the context of shifting power landscapes and from a cultural, sociological and philosophical perspectives involves moving beyond dichotomous conceptualisations of both digital media and emotion as either tools of liberation or oppression. It also involves critically reassessing the traditional interpretation of the emotional as distinct from objective reason, belonging rather to the realm of the subjective, which has no place in political and moral judgment. By following such a trajectory, it would permit to grasp digital activism as well as emotion in their institutional and technological sense as‘ moulding forces’ of communicative action and research them empirically as part of the mediatisation( Hjarvard 2008) process.
To this end, this paper explores the place of digital activism in the shifting landscapes of power by investigating the way in which‘ online mediascapes,’‘ political activism,’‘ emotion’ and inherent‘ power dynamics’ interrelate and how this interrelation applies to the Occupy case, addressing the outlined problematics by the following theoretical questions:( 1) it is essential to establish from the outset what is the relationship between emotion and rational and moral judgment in order to understand( 2) the emotion‐action dyad that is so essential to political engagement; subsequently, it is then possible to investigate the key question of this theoretical treatise, that is,( 3) the way in which‘ online’ media impacts and / or reconfigures not only political emotion and engagement, but also the way power is exercised, which in turn affects and shapes the very constituents of political dissent.
2. Emotion and rational judgment
Recent and past research has established that emotions are central to rational choice making and social adjustment, and involve complex cognitive, evaluative and intentional content, thereby forming an essential part of our system of ethical reasoning. Stevenson’ s emotivist theory, for example, sees ethical sentences not as expressions of propositions, but of emotional attitudes( 1944). Hume( 1751), similarly, considered morality to be related to fact, but“ determined by sentiment”( p. 5).
In the political field, where a long‐standing bias toward cognitive accounts has dominated, the common practice, according to Marcus( 2000),“ at least since Madison( 1961 [ 1787 ]), has been to treat emotion as an unavoidable factor in politics that should be constrained and minimized so that reason dictates judgment with minimal distraction( Callan 1997).” Nevertheless, recent social science research incorporated ideas from neurological and behavioural science( Greene et al. 2004; Prinz 2006; Schnall et al. 2008), establishing that emotions are central to rational choice making and social adjustment and involve complex cognitive, evaluative and intentional content, thereby forming an essential part of our system of ethical reasoning( Greene & Haidt 2002; Blair 1995). From the cognitive philosophy perspective, De Sousa( 1987) considers emotions a perception mechanism that has a crucial role to play in rational beliefs, desires and decisions by
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