Guest
edited by Jens Eder (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf), Julian Hanich
(University of Groningen), and Jane Stadler (Swinburne University)
For
more than two decades emotions have been a major topic of discussion and
contention in film and media studies. From cognitive theories and phenomenology
to affect studies, many different approaches have been suggested, many books
written, and many insights won. However, some crucial questions have barely
been discussed. This special section #Emotions takes stock and seeks to advance
the field in new directions. We suggest a conceptual,
a contextual, an ethical, a political, and
a media-comparative expansion, thus
showing the urgency of thinking further about the interconnection between
contemporary media and the emotions of their audiences.
We
are primarily interested in contributions that focus on emotions that are
actually felt by viewers, readers, gamers, users, or prosumers, and not emotions represented in media, for
instance by way of characters. We are also looking for thick descriptions of
emotional experiences and well-chosen examples of how it feels to undergo a
specific emotion in concrete media engagements and environments. Moreover, we
are interested in the specific dynamics of situated, collective emotional
experiences of different kinds and groups of viewers and users.
Contributions
may focus on but are not restricted to the following topics:
#
Conceptual clarifications: What distinguishes emotions from affects, moods,
feelings, desires, and other cognitive and embodied responses to media texts,
technologies, and experiences?
#
Unnamed emotions: Which emotions do we experience when we engage with films,
television series, or computer games, and which of them do not have a name
(yet)? Do some societies and cultures have names for emotional experiences
which others lack (e.g. rasa, Schadenfreude, ijirashi)?
#
Collective emotions: When, why, and in what media contexts do we experience
collective emotions? What does it mean to share an emotion when engaged with a
film, a television series, a computer game etc.? Can this have moral or
political effects?
#
Emotions and media specificity: How do media differ in their potentials and
strategies of eliciting emotions? For instance, how do social media or virtual
reality experiences steer user emotions? What are the emotional characteristics
of different algorithms, applications, and platforms on the internet and what
affective labour is involved? What can video games do that films cannot, and
vice versa?
#
Emotions of different audiences: How and why do the emotions of media users, of
social groups, political factions, or cultural spheres differ? How can it be
explained, for instance, that one and the same tweet or video triggers glee in
one part of the audience and outrage in another part?
#
Emotions and attention economies: How do changing economies of attention (for
instance, in the context of new media or ‘hybrid media systems’ as described by
Andrew Chadwick) impact on viewer/user emotions?
#
Affective algorithms, emotional AI, and emotion capture: How do digital and
sensory media capture and process user emotional responses? What forms of
emotion capture are emerging, for instance, in virtual assistants, fitness
trackers, software for emotion recognition, or sentiment analysis? What are
their political, legal, cultural, and moral implications?
#
Emotions, media, and ethics: How are emotions of media audiences and users
connected to moral questions and ethical issues? When and how, for instance, do
media manipulate emotions? Can insights from affective computing and critical
perspectives on algorithmic culture help us to understand the ethics of new
media and the emotions they elicit?
#
Emotions, rhetoric, and persuasion: How are emotions used for persuasive
purposes in the media? Which are the most important forms of emotional
persuasion?
#
Emotions, media, and politics/the political: How do different kinds of media
elicit political emotions like outrage, fear, hate, pride, or hope? How do they
construct power relations by triggering those and other emotions? How do they
block empathy or compassion?
We
invite authors to submit an abstract of 300 words plus 3-5 bibliographic
references and a short biography of 100 words by 15 September 2018. Please make
sure your attachment file name is formatted with your last name and your
abstract title. Abstracts should be sent directly to the NECSUS editorial board
at the following address: [log in to unmask] On the basis of selected abstracts,
authors will be invited to submit full manuscripts of 5-7,000 words by 15 February
2019, which will subsequently go through a double-blind peer review process.
References
Bellour,
R. Le corps du cinéma: hypnoses, émotions,
animalités. Paris: POL/Trafic, 2009.
Eder,
J. ‘Collateral Emotions: Political Web Videos and Divergent Audience Responses’
in Cognitive theory and documentary film,
edited by C. Brylla and M. Kramer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Hanich,
J. The audience effect: On the collective
cinema experience. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Laine,
T. Feeling cinema: Emotional dynamics in
film studies. New York: Continuum, 2013.
McStay,
A. Emotional AI: The rise of empathic
media. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2018.
Ngai,
S. Ugly feelings. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2007.
Plantinga,
C. Screen stories. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018.
Sampson,
T., Maddison, S., and Ellis, D (eds). Affect
and social media: Emotion, mediation, anxiety and contagion. Lanham: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2018.
Sinnerbrink,
R. Cinematic ethics: Exploring ethical
experience through film. London: Routledge, 2016.
Smith,
M. Film, art, and the third culture: A
naturalized aesthetics of film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Stadler,
J. Pulling focus: Intersubjective
experience, narrative film, and ethics. New York: Continuum, 2008.
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