How to get angry online…properly: Creating online deliberative systems that harness political anger's power and mitigate its costs

Amitabha Palmer

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2024, vol. 23, issue 3, 295-318

Abstract: Under conditions of high social and political polarization, expressing political anger online toward systemic injustice faces an apparent trilemma: Express none but lose anger's valuable goods; express anger to heterogeneous audiences but risk aggravating inter-group polarization; or express anger to like-minded people but succumb to the epistemic pitfalls and extremist tendencies inherent to homogeneous groups. Solving the trilemma requires cultivating an online environment as a deliberative system composed of four kinds of groups—each with distinct purposes and norms. I argue that applying empirically-guided design principles to this systems framework provides political anger a place where its powers can serve justice without damaging the epistemic, ethical, emotional, and community resources required for a democratic path to correcting systemic injustice.

Keywords: Anger; deliberative democracy; social epistemology; political polarization; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:23:y:2024:i:3:p:295-318

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X231222539

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