Situating Emotion In Digital Culture:: Sentiment, affect and online persona

David Marshall; Janey  Umback

doi:10.21153/psj2023vol9no1art1877

Authors

David Marshall https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0418-4447
Janey Umback Curtin University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/psj2023vol9no1art1877

Keywords:

Emotion, Digital Culture, facial recognition, User Experience, Affect, Atmosphere, Sentiment, Digital Sentiment, Digital Curation, Neuroscience, Emotional Intelligence (EI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Emotional Contagion, Mood Synchrony

Abstract

This introduction to this issue works to map how emotion is situated in contemporary digital culture. It is derived from an international online symposium led by the authors and including leading scholars in this area of study and investigation from more than 5 countries in November 2021. The article works to identify and summarise the material generated by each of the scholars and further links it to the complex domain of persona and digital persona. It specifically explores six distinct topics of digital identity and expression in its intersection with sentiment and affect: 1. Facial Recognition and Expression; 2. Emotion and Technological Interface; 3. Emotional Intelligence in Digital Culture; 4. New Forms of Digital Sensitivity in Social Media and Online Platform Activity; 5. Emotion, Performative Presentation and Curation: Emoji, Hashtags, and Memes; and 6. Digital Mood Synchrony and Digital Contagion. The conclusion then summarises the direction of the Symposium and how it intersects with the articles that are part of this special issue.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

David Marshall

P David Marshall holds a professorship and personal chair in New Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at Deakin University. He is the author of many books including Celebrity and Power (2014),Celebrity Persona Pandemic (2016), Persona Studies (2019), Advertising and Promotional Culture: Case Histories (2018), Web Theory (2003), New Media Cultures (2004), Fame Games (2000), and editor or co-editor of Contemporary Publics (2016), A Companion to Celebrity (2015), and The Celebrity Culture Reader (2006) along with many articles and book chapters that explore persona, fame, popular culture and online and new media. He is one of the founding editors of the journal Persona Studies. He was also the founder of M/C: Media and Culture an online journal started in 1998. He regularly provides expert commentary on public persona, persona studies, celebrity and online culture.

References

BROOKS, R. A. 1999. Cambrian intelligence: The early history of the new AI, MIT press.

ELLIS, D. 2021. Emotion and Technological Interface Discussion +. In MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

— 2021. Locked-Down, Log-In and Slog-On: A Technocratic Dystopia? After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial Transformation in the Wake of COVID-19, 111-127.

ELLIS, D. & TUCKER, I. 2020. Emotion in the digital age: Technologies, data and psychosocial life, Routledge.

ELLIS, D. & VOELA, A. 2021. After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial Transformation in the Wake of COVID-19, Springer.

EKMAN, P. 1993. Facial expression and emotion. American psychologist, 48, 384.

EMOJIPEDIA. 2023. “Man in Suit Levitating: Medium Skin tone on Facebook 15.0.” 27 Feb. Online: https://emojipedia.org/facebook/15.0/man-in-suit-levitating-medium-skin-tone Accessed: 9 Dec. 2023

ERIKSSON, M., FLEISCHER, R., JOHANSSON, A., SNICKARS, P. & VONDERAU, P. 2019. Spotify teardown: Inside the black box of streaming music, MIT Press.

JOHANSSEN, J. 2018. Psychoanalysis and digital culture: Audiences, social media, and big data, Routledge.

— 2021. Facial Expression and Recognition Discussion +. In: MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

KARPPI, T. 2018. Disconnect: Facebook's affective bonds, Minneapolis, U of Minnesota Press. KOLEHMAINEN, M. 2021. Facial Expression and Recognition Discussion +. In: MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

— 2022. Intimate technology? Teletherapies in the era of COVID-19. Affective intimacies. Manchester University Press.

LENKA, R. M. 2021. The impact of Emotional intelligence in the Digital Age. Psychology and Education Journal, 58, 1844-1852.

MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) 2021. Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube.

MARSHALL, D. 2022. Correlating affect and emotion: Covidiquette and the expanding curation of online persona (s). Thesis Eleven, 169, 8-25.

— 2022a. Digital sentiment: Persona and the personal curation and industrial correlation of affect and emotion in our transformed digital human culture. World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education 2022: WCAHSSE–Eurasia Conferences, 2022. MARSHALL, P. D. & QYLL, N. 2022b. The Transforming Presentation of the Contemporary Self: ersona, branding and the curation/correlation of identity into digital forms of communication. Australian & New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) Conference 2022: Communicating through Chaos: Connection, Disruption, Community, 2022. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hIZfzpaObY

MASSUMI, B. 2015. Politics of affect, John Wiley & Sons.

— 2018. 99 theses on the revaluation of value: A postcapitalist manifesto, U of Minnesota Press. MAURI, M. 2021. Facial Expression and Recognition +. In: MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

MAURI, M., RANCATI, G., GAGGIOLI, A. & RIVA, G. 2021. Applying implicit association test techniques and facial expression analyses in the comparative evaluation of website user experience. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 674159.

NORMAN, A. & DRAPER, W. 1986. User-centred system design: New perspectives. Human Computer Interaction.

NORMAN, D. 2014 (1993). Things that make us smart: Defending human attributes in the age of the machine, Diversion Books.

PEDWELL, C. 2021. Computation, emotion placement And AI Thoughts +. In: MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture. 21 November. Online: Deakin University: YouTube, Deakin University, FPRC. Online via Zoom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

— 2014. Affective relations: The transnational politics of empathy, Springer.

— 2017. Mediated habits: images, networked affect and social change. Subjectivity, 10, 147-169. — 2019. Digital tendencies: intuition, algorithmic thought and new social movements. Culture, theory and critique, 60, 123-138.

— 2022. Speculative machines and us: more-than-human intuition and the algorithmic condition+.Cultural Studies, 1-31.

PICARD, R. W. 2000. Affective computing, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.

SAMPSON, T. D. 2012. Virality: Contagion theory in the age of networks, Minneapolis, U of Minnesota Press

— 2016. The assemblage brain: Sense making in neuroculture, Minneapolis, U of Minnesota Press.

— 2020. A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media, John Wiley & Sons.

—. 2021. Digital Mood and Digital Contagion Discussion +. In MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture. 21 November. Online: Deakin University: YouTube, Deakin University, FPRC. Online via Zoom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

SAMPSON, T., MADDISON, S. & ELLIS, D. 2018. Affect and social media: Emotion, mediation, anxiety and contagion, Rowman & Littlefield.

SAMPSON, T. D. & PARIKKA, J. 2021. The Operational loops of a pandemic. Cultural Politics, 17, 55-68

SHAH, R. & TEWARI, R. 2021. Mapping Emoji Usage Among Youth. Journal of Creative Communications, 16, 113-125.

SIMONDON, G. 2005. L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information, Éditions Jérôme Millon.

— 1992. The genesis of the individual. Incorporations, 6, 296-319.

DE SPINOZA, B. 1996. Ethics, London, Penguin Books.

SUTHERLAND, T. & WARK, S. 2015. Gilbert Simondon: Media and Technics. Platform: Journal of Media and Communication, 6, 1-131.

TARDE, G. 1903. The laws of imitation, New York, H. Holt.

—. 1901. L'opinion et la foule, Paris, Alcan.

TOMKINS, S. S. 2008. Affect imagery consciousness: The complete edition: Two Volumes, Springer

TUCKER, I, 2021 Emotion and Technological Interface Discussion +. In MARSHALL, P. D. (ed.) Situating Emotion in Digital Culture Symposium. 21 November. Deakin University and online via Zoom: YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADJFsKvFR8

TUCKER, I., EASTON, K. & PRESTWOOD, R. 2023. Digital community assets: Investigating the impact of online engagement with arts and peer support groups on mental health during COVID-19. Sociology of Health & Illness, 45, 666-683.

TURKLE, S. 2011. Authenticity in the age of digital companions. Machine ethics, 8, 62-76.

WANG, Y., SONG, W., TAO, W., LIOTTA, A., YANG, D., LI, X., GAO, S., SUN, Y., GE, W. & ZHANG, W. 2022. A systematic review on affective computing: Emotion models, databases, and recent advances. Information Fusion, 83, 19-52.

WEIZENBAUM, J. 1983. ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the ACM, 26, 23-28.

WHITE, D. & KATSUNO, H. 2022. Artificial emotional intelligence beyond East and West. Internet Policy Review, 11, 1-17. .

WYLIE, C. 2018. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: 'We spent $1 m harvesting millions of Facebook profiles'. The Guardian, 17.

WILSON, E. A. 2010. Affect and Artificial Intelligence, Seattle, WA, USA, University of Washington Press.

YONCK, R. 2020. Heart of the machine: Our future in a world of artificial emotional intelligence, New York, New York, Arcade.

ZAPPAVIGNA, M. 2018. Searchable talk: Hashtags and social media metadiscourse, Bloomsbury Publishing.

ZEAVIN, H. 2021. The distance cure: A history of teletherapy, MIT Press.