The Balaclava as Affect Generator: Free Pussy Riot Protests and Transnational Iconicity

August 17, 2012 was a “Global Day of Action” in support of Pussy Riot, a radical feminist performance group from Russia who had been incarcerated for their “Punk Prayer” at the altar of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in February 2012. This paper reads the “Punk Prayer” as an image event with an extensive afterlife, mobilized through the transnational icon of the balaclava. By reading its production (socially and spatially) along with its circulation, evident in solidarity protest images, it argues that transnational iconicity enables transnational solidarity, an affective sense of connection and responsibility.     

An Examination into the Dyadic Effects of Mood in Social Interactions

Much of the research on mood and communication has failed to examine the potential social and interactive attributes of mood suggested by studies involving affective contagion. An experiment involving 63 dyads was conducted manipulating the mood of both individuals involved to investigate these issues. Results suggest that the mood of both individuals can potentially impact an individual within an interaction. The findings are discussed, and future directions are suggested.     

Cinema and Choric Connection: Lost in Translation as Sensual Experience

The rise of the new information technologies, and corresponding proliferation of signs, images, and information, has contributed to a growing sense of alienation and dislocation. For many, the contemporary moment is an unending and disorienting sea of sensory-symbolic excesses. Lost in Translation is a film addressed to these anxieties. Engaging the film as a sensual experience, we argue that Lost in Translation equips viewers to confront the feelings of alienation and dislocation brought on by the sensory-symbolic excesses of (post)modernity by fostering a sense of choric connection. This sense, we demonstrate, is elicited primarily by the film's material (nonsymbolic, aesthetic) dimensions. Drawing on an analysis of the film's aesthetic elements, we conclude by reflecting on the implications for film studies, rhetorical studies, and everyday life.     

Arguments from Analogy and Beyond: The Persuasive Artistry of Local American Civic Life

This essay analyzes a local civic debate in which the purposive, referential, and deliberative structures of an argument by comparison are rendered inoperative. In so doing, it advances our understanding of the rhetoric of exemplarity, widens our conception of democratic political contention, and directs scholarly attention to local forums of civic life, where rhetorical motive often gives way to pure persuasion, reasoned debate commonly slips into everyday talk, democratic deliberation frequently verges on radical dissensus, and emotional investments routinely culminate in affective events.     

Teacher Caring and Classroom Behavior: Relationships with Student Affect and Perceptions of Teacher Competence and Trustworthiness

This study investigated the impact of teacher misbehaviors and caring on students' affect, teacher evaluation, and teacher competence and trustworthiness. After reading hypothetical scenarios of teachers engaging in appropriate (or inappropriate) behaviors and communicating caring (or non-caring), students reported perceptions of teacher competence and trustworthiness and affect. Results of the analysis of variance revealed significant main effects for teacher caring and appropriateness on teacher competence and trustworthiness. Although there were interaction effects, the variance accounted for was minimal. Teacher caring was also positively related to students' affect toward the course and the teacher. This study demonstrates that teachers should maintain appropriate classroom behavior and communicate caring towards students to preserve their credibility and affect in the classroom.     

“Strictly an act of street violence”: intimate publicity and affective divestment in the New Orleans Mother’s Day shooting

On May 12, 2013, two men opened fire on a Mother’s Day second line parade in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward. This essay attends to discourses from public officials and news media following the shooting that reified what we describe as affective divestment from the suffering of historically marginalized bodies and communities. Specifically, public discourse characterized the shooting as an episode of “street violence” that did not warrant sustained national attention. Affective divestment is the consequence of rhetorical maneuvers that signal a pushing away from certain bodies by intimate publics—an estrangement at the symbolic level that has naturalized or rationalized the neglect of certain forms of suffering. Such estrangement, we argue, is a function of neoliberal logics that devalue and, at times, necessitate the suffering of disposable populations.     

The path to the machine: affect studies,technology, and the question of ineffability

From the 1990s to the early twenty-first century, a range of writers in sociology, history, and cultural studies would increasingly see emotion as an important area of study. This “affective turn” has offered an important corrective to standard scientific conceptions of emotion, highlighting the mysteries of embodiment that are ignored by a narrowly empirical approach. While celebrating this development, this paper offers a series of cautions drawn from a comparative history of scholarly attention to emotion. Similarly to the early twenty-first century understanding of affect, the social sciences of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century employed a neo-romantic conception of emotion. By the 1920s, this idea would be subsumed into a new scientific paradigm that saw the new recording technologies as perfect vehicles for taming the mysteries of emotion. I discuss strategies for avoiding this scientizing of emotion in our own period, which is similarly taken with a series of “new technologies.”     

The Partisan Affect of News Seekers vs. Gatekeepers: Linguistic Differences in Online vs. Front-Page News in Campaign 2012

This article examines if patterns in online news seeking privilege stories featuring more linguistic markers of partisan affect than those positioned by traditional gatekeepers on the print front page. Online “most-read” and print front-page stories covering 8 weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign were submitted to computer-assisted text analysis (n = 302). Guided by research on online and partisan affect, this study hypothesizes that (a) “most-read” stories will feature more supportive language than stories placed on the front page by traditional gatekeepers when the news outlet has a reputation for supporting the incumbent party; and (b) “most-read” stories will feature more antagonistic language than those placed on the front page by traditional gatekeepers when the news outlet has a reputation for supporting the challenger party. The findings show how online audiences opted for stories that featured more linguistic markers of preferred partisan affect than journalists and editors placed on Page One.     

Affective response to gambling promotions during televised sport: A qualitative analysis

Gambling promotions extensively punctuate contemporary televised sport broadcasts and concerns have been raised about their potential impacts on vulnerable groups. Research suggests advertising can shape individuals’ emotions, or affect, towards a product/brand and can subsequently influence purchasing decisions. Consequently, understanding how promotion of gambling influences sport viewers is an important although sparsely addressed area of research. This paper presents exploratory research on affective responses towards gambling promotions displayed during televised sport. Eight online focus groups were conducted with a sample of regular sports viewers in Queensland, Australia. Participants were exposed to a variety of gambling promotions used in National Rugby League match telecasts. Utilising adaptive theory, themes reflecting affective responses to each promotional technique were identified. A range of positive and negative affective responses were identified including arousal, joy, anger and worry. A conceptual model representing emergent affective response categories, message delivery techniques and moderating variables is proposed to inform a broader future research agenda examining how gambling promotions during televised sport influence affective response and concomitant gambling intention.     

Cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning

This special section focuses on cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning in a range of learning domains. Expanding previous research that has taken a predominantly cognitive perspective of multimedia learning, recent studies have begun to consider affective aspects of multimedia learning with the aim of integrating emotion, motivation, and other affective variables into cognitive processing models. The articles included in this special section are examples of the various ways in which the cognitive perspective can be enhanced by taking affective aspects of learning into account. Investigations range from the study of confusion as an affective state that can be beneficial to learning, and the consideration of the potential distracting or motivating function of decorative illustrations, to an inquiry into how visual design can induce positive emotions in learners. The results of the studies included in this section are in line with Moreno's Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning with Media (CATLM; Moreno, 2006) and show how emotion and interest facilitate cognitive processing and improve cognitive and affective outcomes.