What role do media play in emotion generation and regulation? On one side, diverse media are emotion initiators. Current environmental, energy and political crises may fill us with fear, concern, and worries.
We follow news updates with concern and hope. On the other side, we engage in social interaction in social media with close friends who may be far away. We listen to music. We regulate our emotions in interactive media systems (such as virtual and augmented reality), and on-demand entertainment media.
As these examples show: Emotions and media need to be studied from a wide array of perspectives, each bringing distinctive insights. Based on The Routledge International Handbook of Emotions and Media (Döveling, Konijn 2021, available online) this class discusses up-to-date inter/transdisciplinary research findings of emotion regulation reaching from psychology to sociology and media and communication perspectives. Grounded in little projects that students can choose freely, students will investigate and grasp the multifold areas of emotions and media in different media settings in our digital society.
Aiming to represent the different insights, this class will engage in discourse on these highly relevant interdisciplinary schools of emotion research and discuss fruitful perspectives that are elaborated in the Routledge International Handbook of Emotions and Media by experts from all over the globe. The Students will actively reflect on emotions in their lives and comprehend emotions in daily interactions on a micro-, a meso- and a macro level. The benefits and challenges implicated in crossing disciplines that study emotions and media, from mediatized emotion to digital affect cultures (Döveling et al 2018) are discussed. Potentially, special international guests may be invited giving insight into their contribution to the understanding of emotions and media