Digital Rage Against the Machine: Informalisation and Online Discourse

Cas Wouters’s description of 20^th century informalisation is predicated on the assumption that the increasing spectrum of acceptable social behaviours also continued the trajectory of increasing demands on emotional management by individuals. This trend was evident as social functions became more differentiated and integrated and was tied to periods of formalisation and informalisation across the 19^th and 20^th centuries. These periods, according Wouters, were also connected to collective emancipation opportunities surrounding class and gender. This presentation seeks to investigate whether such informalisation processes have continued in the same direction within the context of the third ‘digital space’.

Digital discourse, in particular social media discourse, offers both a reinforcement and a challenge to the concept of ‘emotional management’ in the social space. Overt displays of extremes of emotion are both encouraged and regulated through the structures of social media platforms. The prevalence of polemical discourse in recent decades is one example whereby the digital spaces are increasingly lacking in social integration and challenging the emancipatory element of informalisation. Through a qualitative investigation of expressions of emotion in digital spaces, namely self-righteous anger, this paper will address the question of whether ‘digital manners’ reflect a continuation of the long-term process of informalisation. By investigating the digital space as a vehicle for emotional expression, the role of digital discourse in the management of negative emotions may reveal the extent to which psychogenic process of informalisation have actually been internalised.