Notes
Technology-Mediated Moral Outrage: A Theoretical View on Intrapersonal, Intergroup, and Network Effects
1Moral outrage as the anger over moral violations has been identified as a powerful tool to provoke societal change. On social media, we see episodes of moral outrage covering a series of pressing societal issues, such as human rights violations (e.g., #MahsaAmini), racism (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter), and gender injustice (e.g., #EqualPay), emerge in real time. Recent scholarly views claim that the power of moral outrage has been extended by emerging network technologies, but not for the good. Some scholars argue that excessively experiencing moral outrage through contemporary communication technologies incites a new culture of punishing and cancelling others and enhances our hostility toward those who hold different moral convictions, thereby fostering societal division and unrest.
2In face of these dystopian claims, we still lack scientific knowledge regarding the mechanisms and effects of the phenomenon of moral outrage shared through social media. To provide an initial theory-driven understanding, this contribution presents a preliminary theoretical framework to explain the immediate and long-term effects of technology-mediated moral outrage on human beings’ moral systems. By integrating different strands of moral, social, and media psychological as well as communication research, I present a set of partly competing and partly complementing hypotheses that connect multiple levels of analysis in the sense of intrapersonal, intergroup, and network effects over time.
3First, I propose that exposure to or expression of moral outrage on social media strengthen users’ moral cognitions by (re-)learning the importance and desirability of a certain moral foundation (morality reinforcement hypothesis). Second, a dynamic association is also conceivable: While a moral outrage message on social media might not initially fully reflect one’s internal moral system, the mere expression of the message and the social feedback within one’s online network may lead to a stronger internalization of the moral cognition over time (self-effect hypothesis). Third, due to psychological exhaustion, the associations between moral outrage experiences on social media and moral cognitions as well as moral judgment abilities may become weaker over time (outrage fatigue hypothesis). In this case, an individual's moral system becomes desensitized using network technologies in the long term. Fourth, following the principles of socialization, it seems possible that being exposed through social media to moral outrage in a recurring form cultivates a general tendency to dehumanize and a habitual desire to punish moral transgressors (dehumanization hypothesis). Fifth, the juxtaposition of forming animosities toward moral dissenters and strengthening one’s moral cognitions could even lead to tribalism between moral in-groups and out-groups (moral tribalism hypothesis). Sixth, in the long term, strengthening one’s favoritism for a moral in-group and one’s dislike of a moral out-group could also lead to the dissolution of (digital) relationships between moral dissenters. Moral tribalism, fueled through technology-mediated moral outrage, may lead to an increasing disconnection between morally homogeneous clusters within networks (moral fragmentation hypothesis).
4The presentation will cover the theoretical underpinnings of these hypotheses as well as suggestions for an empirical research agenda and will hopefully provoke a scholarly debate to systematically uncover the efficacy of network technologies to shape human beings’ morality.
5Social media / moral outrage / morality / tribalism / hashtag activism / political participation