Indignant crops

While anger, anger, and outrage are essential emotions for the appropriate functioning of life, even to be able to defend their borders from fraud, is showing them in excess or in inadequate situations, or artificial stimulation for certain purposes, is simply a pathological phenomenon. Today, I am publishing a text about social polarisation through the usage of anger, anger and outrage by demagogues, and about how this phenomenon negatively affects public debate and democracy. This is simply a reprint of Simon Pękali's book "War of Ideas" (Horizonal Mark).

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Photo by Tumisu/Pixabay from late.

More and more frequent – or at least more visible – the reaction to what is happening around us is outrage, frequently coupled with the request to manifest your anger as many as possible. It's getting harder and harder to get on the social network without encountering the expression of anger. specified entries are frequently surrounded by comments from people who confirm the rightness of anger or who point out that we should truly be even more outraged about something else. On the Internet, this is the most visible, but it is besides slow spilling on direct contacts between people and is noticeable at work, at university or even at the household table. What is besides crucial is that this is clearly intensified on the occasion of controversial social events or before the elections.

However, this is not an accident. If we look closely at the most popular forms of political propaganda in fresh years, we announcement that, contrary to appearances, they do not match common ideas about how the figures of the planet of politics relate to voters. In the public consciousness, it became apparent that politicians operate mainly with fear. They rise in people a sense of danger (real or not) from which they can free them. Examples of specified treatments can be observed in fresh years. However, their usefulness is not as large as it may seem, and it is harder to usage for a long time.

Fear is not a affirmative emotion. People don't want to be afraid, and they'd like the fear to vanish as shortly as possible. They don't brag about how frightened they are. There is, on the another hand, an emotion that is much more effective in helping to rise political capital, as PR agencies working for political parties are full aware. That emotion is anger. Anger stimulates and mobilizes. It can warm up the fight and give a sense of action in a good cause. It can besides be directed towards a peculiar enemy, an adversary painted not as a powerful individual to be feared, but as a wicked individual to be destroyed.

Research by the Norwegian Institute for Social investigation has shown that although anger and fear motivate political behavior, each of these emotions has a completely different reaction, especially in the net space. Those who fear something are more frequently seeking information that will dispel their fears, that will let them to calm down, and those who are agitated – those who will deepen this state, will strengthen them in the belief that there is something to be angry about, and will stimulate them even more. They are besides much more likely to engage in political contention. Both with those who share their views and with those who differ. As a result, outraged people simply get more active in activities related to this emotion. Not only will they be more likely to go to elections, but they will besides more frequently advance electoral slogans and infect others with their attitude. And even if they origin outrage besides among voters of another political options, at least they sustain the atmosphere of engagement and struggle. And erstwhile that is the goal, then politicians in the planet are usually paid to have their voters agitated.

Of course, an effective run is simply a complex mosaic, which besides consists of many another elements, and cannot be reduced to 1 factor. However, it can be seen that for years, anger has been an integral part of political propaganda, especially the successful one. Examples of specified treatments are very visible. Most of all, in campaigns of political groups in Poland, the program, objectives and values are increasingly overlooked. Politicians focus mainly on showing how outrageous the ideas and actions of their opponents are. In the conflict on the PiS–PO line, as early as the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the basic rhetorical procedure was to remind people how much they destruct Poland and why we gotta mobilize to halt them. Over the years, things are getting worse.

Probably the most memorable slogan that was given during Andrzej Duda's run before the last presidential election was #RafałNieł. In the polling spots presenting this slogan, the president, seeking re-election, did not even appear. For this, the personification of Poland told that the candidate KO has a “loose reputation” and the only thing he gave people is simply a “toxic cesspool” (referring to a sewage treatment plant failure in Warsaw). In turn, in the popular electoral place Rafał Trzaskowski he himself is visible for precisely 4 seconds. The remainder of the time was devoted to the actor playing the caricature of Duda – an inalienable, self-confident, smoothing out the pen, to whom he signs everything as he flies. Or a run entitled "Don't Vote Elections 2020", in which we see the faces of nationalists, devots and the old man with the white-red pin on his jacket. Everyone ominously shouts what they will do to Poland if the young do not vote in the elections.

Szymon Pękala, “War of Ideas”, ed. The sign of Horizon.

And besides an example of a truck that drove around Polish cities as part of the run "STOP Pedophilia". It featured graphics with a crossed rainbow and slogans unequivocally saying that homosexuality is linked to kid sexual harassment. All this happened in 2020 alone. specified treatments present a threat not as something to hide from, but as something to oppose. They are not meant to drive the audience into a long-term sense of fear, but to provoke his outrage, to tell his friends about it in a tantrum, to post on Facebook and to get up the next day with the conviction that something had to be done about it.

In online marketing, we can see akin mechanisms, which is confirmed by studies conducted by prof. Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania, an expert in viral marketing and the social impact that Apple or Google consulted. They show that although affirmative emotions are very contagious on the Internet, the most contagious ones are negative emotions – e.g. anger or tense anxiety – which push to contact much more powerfully than even sadness. The key origin is agitation. The information that puts us in specified a state is more readily given by us. On the another hand, algo rhythms of social media for completely understandable reasons are designed to advance these entries most widely, which have generated the most reactions and generated the top engagement of the audience. Their primary goal is to keep the user from the screen for as long as possible.

When an entry informing about what the evil ones did to you again, stimulates readers and naturally induces quite a few reactions – likes, comments and releases – it does not substance for the algorithm the actual content (unless it contains prohibited offensive words or images or is rejected due to the temporary sight of the moderator). What matters is that he got attention and activated users. So we request to show it to as many recipients as possible, who in turn will respond to it again and give it further, which will give the algorithm a signal that it is worth recommending it even more. Therefore, the fact that we see so many posts with outrageous information while browsing Facebook is not random. Similarly, users do not have a "I don't like" reaction, but a "wrr". Posts that have made the audience tense naturally gain greater coverage on social media. For precisely the same reason, we are increasingly seeing clickbait articles titles on news portals, geared towards causing outrage. Their creators are well aware that if they manage to stimulate the recipient, e.g. by making him angry, they will importantly increase the chance that he will send his friends or make a link to their portal available somewhere.

All of this raises a deeper problem. In the current political strategy and in the light of how the net and social media work, the described tactics are simply profitable erstwhile you want to scope as many people as possible – that is why it is naturally chosen in areas where success is determined by the existence of mass awareness. Like in the media or politics. Those who usage akin treatments gain an additional advantage over competition. As shortly as specified techniques appear and normalize in a given field, all competitors who do not want to fall behind must besides start utilizing them. Of course, this is only 1 way of gaining popularity.

Theoretically, it is possible to make up for the shortcomings resulting from the non-use of these methods by being attractive to the recipient, but fresh years clearly show that causing outrage is not only effective, but besides 1 of the cheapest and least demanding ways to attract attention and build social coverage. Therefore, it is not amazing that players are eager to scope for it in games specified as democracy or online marketing. The impact of these phenomena on the democratic strategy itself could, of course, be considered. Will the discovery, popularisation and standardisation of specified plays not entail a number of serious consequences, delayed in effect, which will yet lead to the dissolution of the game itself? Increasingly, 1 can hear fears that advanced socio-technique combined with the shifting of more and more public debate to the net may have led to the distribution of democracy and its change into something that will no longer match the ideals it has been associated with. I think these hypotheses are worth considering.

The ever-present and increasing hostility is slow becoming average in our country. We tend to hatred each other. In 2019, the Center for Prejudice investigation published a study on Political Polarization in Poland. How divided we are, which has shown that the voters of Law and Justice most frequently dehumanize Muslims and refugees, but even more frequently opposition voters dehumanize PiS voters. In consequence to this, an highly interesting phenomenon was observed – media that favored various political options began to bid, who truly hates whom more, and in fact accepted hatred as a completely natural approach to political opponents, and treated information that we dehumanized them a small little than they dehumanized us as something to boast about. They did not mention at all that hatred and dehumanization are phenomena which, in principle, should not be treated as average in a civilized democratic society.