#PowerOfEmotions: a new collection highlights the role and manifestation of affects in politics and society

The new collection shows how emotions and affects shape political identities, amplify polarisation in times of crisis, and often turn public debate into emotional confrontation. „Power of Emotions. On the Affective Constitution of Political Struggle“ is edited by Andreas Ventsel, Professor of Political and Sociosemiotics at the University of Tartu, and Peeter Selg, Professor of Governance and Political Analysis at Tallinn University.

This Springer collection studies the manifestation of meaning-making based on emotions at the cultural and social level, showing from different perspectives how emotions, discourse, and cultural context shape political identities, fear scenarios, disinformation campaigns, polarisation, and other phenomena in a networked society. The circle of authors is interdisciplinary, including semioticians, political and media scholars, and (cultural) psychologists.

Political identities and communities are formed in social and mass media primarily through people’s emotional reactions to daily news. This is amplified by the fact that online communication is predominantly audio-visual. It becomes especially evident in times of crisis – whether the topic is migration, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the war in Ukraine.

In such situations, public discussions often intertwine with people’s personal feelings. Labels, images, and hashtags (#) become visible and popular, bringing together different phenomena under one simple sign.

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One of the reasons for compiling the collection was to better understand how emotions and affects shape meaning-making. As one of the editors, Andreas Ventsel, notes: “Community formation based on affects is unstable and short-term, also dangerous, because complex social and political problems are reduced to simplified ‘yes/no’ choices.” Thus, substantive discussions and argument-based problem-solving become increasingly difficult – discussion is replaced by emotion-based confrontation, where one is either for or against.

The collection was published in the series “Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences” and contains both theoretical analyses and empirical case studies.

Further reading: Andreas Ventsel: Psychological defense against fear and deterrence ERR News, 21.02.2025.