A Moral Investigation into “the Mediatized Anger”: Taking the Indignation on the Internet as an Example

ZENG Chi

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Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2022, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (3) : 139-159.

A Moral Investigation into “the Mediatized Anger”: Taking the Indignation on the Internet as an Example

  • ZENG Chi
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Abstract

In the mediated society, anger has become the social mentality that dominates our political life, public opinion, and interpersonal relationships. Anger not only spreads through the media, but also changes its logic of production, expression, and experience by the media agenda. This article names this new type of anger as “the mediatized anger”. Since anger is an important moral emotion that shapes interpersonal relations, the mediatized anger will bring new phenomena and problems to the ethics of interpersonal communication. Therefore, this article will make a moral investigation into the mediatized anger from the perspectives of justification, drawbacks, and solutions. Firstly, being a reactive emotion in reciprocal relations, anger has gained justification from the proof of normativity, which provides individuals a moral reason to recognize and practice the logic of anger. Secondly, the internet prefers a special type of anger, namely, indignation. The media agenda changes the moral characteristics and experience mechanism of indignation, which causes problems such as the solidification of morality, moral indifference, and moral antagonism. Thirdly, alleviating anger is in need of reflecting the justification of anger and reviving multiple types of interpersonal communication.

Key words

mediatization / indignation / emotional communication / interpersonal communication

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ZENG Chi. A Moral Investigation into “the Mediatized Anger”: Taking the Indignation on the Internet as an Example . Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication. 2022, 44(3): 139-159

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Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Education Key Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (No.: 16JJD860008).
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