Final published version
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Beyond Emotion : Empathy, Social Contagion and Cultural Literacy. / Crawshaw, Robert.
In: Open Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2020, p. 676-685.Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Beyond Emotion
T2 - Empathy, Social Contagion and Cultural Literacy
AU - Crawshaw, Robert
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This paper reviews the implications for research in cultural literacy of the current hypothesis that revolutionary advances in communication technology are inseparable from an over-reliance on emotion, both in the representation of global disaster and human suffering and as a means of manipulating public behaviour in the political and commercial spheres. It explores the view that feeling has become a simulacrum or form of “hyperreality” whose “contagion” through targeted exploitation is an obstacle to deeper understanding of social processes. It summarises the challenges which this presents for research into the nature of cultural literacy by critically considering three current paradigms: affect theory, clinical psychology including neuroscience, and memetics with due regard for recent attempts to model social behaviour through computer-based simulation. Its conclusions are that historical comparisons between past and present of the processes whereby cultural artefacts mediate emotion, combined with highly contextualised empirical fieldwork into their contemporary impact, should be key foci of critical research into cultural literacy, using the full range of technological instruments available.
AB - This paper reviews the implications for research in cultural literacy of the current hypothesis that revolutionary advances in communication technology are inseparable from an over-reliance on emotion, both in the representation of global disaster and human suffering and as a means of manipulating public behaviour in the political and commercial spheres. It explores the view that feeling has become a simulacrum or form of “hyperreality” whose “contagion” through targeted exploitation is an obstacle to deeper understanding of social processes. It summarises the challenges which this presents for research into the nature of cultural literacy by critically considering three current paradigms: affect theory, clinical psychology including neuroscience, and memetics with due regard for recent attempts to model social behaviour through computer-based simulation. Its conclusions are that historical comparisons between past and present of the processes whereby cultural artefacts mediate emotion, combined with highly contextualised empirical fieldwork into their contemporary impact, should be key foci of critical research into cultural literacy, using the full range of technological instruments available.
KW - culture
KW - affect
KW - emotion
KW - empathy
KW - memetics
KW - literacy
U2 - 10.1515/culture-2018-0061
DO - 10.1515/culture-2018-0061
M3 - Journal article
VL - 2
SP - 676
EP - 685
JO - Open Cultural Studies
JF - Open Cultural Studies
SN - 2451-3474
IS - 1
ER -