A Field Guide to Internet Emotion > 4.0 Ambient Emotion

Tech emotionographer Pamela Pavliscak hosts an 8-month Interintellect Salon series while writing her new book #Feels: How Technology is Changing Our Emotional Life for the Better. 

Have you ever wondered why we feel compelled to note and name every new variation of sadness online? Or what you call that emotional hangover you can get after scrolling social media? Or how to explain that little leap of anxiety when the 3 dots appear as someone writes you a text message, and then mysteriously disappears? Then this is the salon series for you!

#Feels 4.0 > Ambient

The fourth session of the series is all about how we pick up a vibe, catch a feeling, or collectively create a mood. The accumulation of likes on a Tiktok post can lift your spirits, while watching a video clouded by a flurry of angry Facebook reactions can leave you feeling incensed.

Humans are remarkable emotional climate sensors. Yes, even (or maybe especially) online. Collective emotion, whether direct outpourings of grief over the tragic deaths of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, symbolic signs of solidarity like the black Instagram squares for #BLM, or the shared humor of Bernie Sander’s suddenly everywhere chair, is hard-wired in the network.

Call it emotional contagion, crowd emotion, or just catching a vibe, emotion radiates through the network. Is this the worst kind of viral outbreak or a new form of collective effervescence? Here we’ll dive into how we catch feels from each other and what it means for our emotional life.

Pre-Salon Prep

Please read or watch the following, before the session:

• Watch Nicholas Christakis’s TED talk The Hidden Influence of Social Networks
• Read Facebook Emotions are Contagious in Scientific American, a summary of that notorious study Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks
• Learn more about collective effervescence as A Specific Kind of Joy We’ve Been Missing by Adam Grant in The New York Times
• Consider the Jonathan Harris’ Network Effect (or go back a little further with We Feel Fine) and take a look at the Hedonometer by the Vermont Complex Systems Center

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