merzWissenschaft, the scientific edition of the media-educational journal merz │ medien + erziehung

Deadline: January 13, 2025

Supervising Editors: Katrin Döveling (Hochschule Darmstadt, University of Applied Sciences), Margreth Lünenborg (Freie Universität Berlin) and the merzWissenschaft editorial team

"Powered by emotions" was the slogan recently chosen by a prominent German television channel to advertise its broadcast program, an indication of the significance of emotions in entertainment communications. The title of a current news podcast is "Feel the news". Here emotions are explicitly mobilized in the encounter with the news. In digital communication, algorithmically-based selection and distribution of media content ranges ultimately make a substantial contribution to evoking and reinforcing emotions and bringing them into the widest possible circulation. Feelings of expectation, curiosity, anger, empathy or abhorrence increase the amount of time users remain on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube; here these platforms differ from one another in terms of their respective unique "emotional architectures" (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019).

Films evoke our sympathy, immersive VR and AR technologies make it possible for us to empathize with other entities. Negative political stereotypes as well as denigrations based on skin color, ethnicity, sexuality or gender are often the product of emotionally-based media experiences of 'foreign' and 'different'. Attraction to media content ranges as well as experience of media use are substantially affective and based on emotion. Media science and communication science research has long seen emotion as relevant and investigated emotion primarily in areas involving media-psychological consideration of entertainment communications. However, in the meantime the field of research has expanded considerably – at the level of media content ranges, emotions are becoming highly significant in all fields. Whether news about war or other crises, computer game design, presence of social media influencers, suspense dramaturgy in series or curating playlists – the evocation, regulation, intensification and levelling of emotions all play a central role in all aspects of production, presentation and reception of media content ranges. Sensor-driven media such as wearables even realize a direct feedback loop in which sensory experience of the human body is registered and extended, amplified and levelled by media impulses. Thus for example algorithmically-based music selection adapts itself to match the user's pulse rate. A very wide variety of phenomena and irregularities are to be found, both on the media content range side and on the part of media users.

In the field of emotion, media psychological research has made extensive progress in understanding emotions in the reception and impact of a wide range of media. Media-sociological and media-cultural analyses capture the significance of emotions in experiencing media as a social-cultural process. Arlie Hochschild has used the terms 'emotional labor' and 'feeling rules' to clearly delineate the extent of social and cultural formation of emotions and of how emotions themselves in turn form social interaction. Using emojis, pressing the 'like' button and the collaborative design of ironic or sarcastic memes are an exemplary expression of this which also highlights the significance of visual communication. Here media-educational research is interested in the way emotions are influenced by (early-childhood) media use, what the consequences of (intensive) media consumption are for emotion regulation abilities and how the media-based experience of emotion can be practically utilized in learning processes. Simple, uni-directional assumptions on effect have long been a thing of the past. Instead, emotions and the experience of emotion are understood as an essential component of daily interaction with media. From a media-educational perspective this means for example investigation of how parents handle the emotions of their children in media education, which role emotions play in how youth deal with misinformation, how emotions can support (digital) entitlement, or, more broadly speaking, how media appropriation and mental health interact. This type of relational understanding of emotion however entails considerable challenges in both theoretical and empirical terms. Raymond Williams' historical concept of the "structures of feeling" (1977) has given rise to analyses of "emotional regimes" (Reddy, 2001) and – under digital conditions – of the encounter with "infra-structures of feeling" (Coleman, 2018).

Does media and communication science have adequately differentiated theoretical concepts of emotion and affect which are capable of describing and explaining this complex interaction? What theoretical, methodical and methodological challenges does a relational understanding of emotion entail? How can interdisciplinary collaboration enrich communication science research on emotion? And what is the (additional) relevance of communication science research on emotion to (media) educational questions?

We look forward to receiving submissions based on this foundation which critically explore the relationship between emotions and media from a variety of perspectives. Both empirical articles and theoretical-conceptual contributions are welcome. Here the focus should center in particular on the relevance of emotions and emotion research to (media) educational practice.

• What definition of emotion appears adequate for research in digital media landscapes?

• What understanding of emotion manifests in media production by professional stakeholders (journalists, filmmakers, game developers, etc.) and non-professional stakeholders (users, influencers, etc.)?

• How can the significance of emotion as a component part of media content ranges be identified conceptually and empirically and at the same time as a dimension in experiencing media?

• What role does emotion play in the process of creating content?

• What is the influence of emotion on the selection and curation of content (page design, program design, algorithmic selection)

• How can emotions be identified in visual communication?

• What is the role of feeling rules in peer communication via (digital) media content ranges and in dealing with media?

• How can emotional involvement be utilized in learning processes? Can "affective media practices" (Lünenborg et al., 2021) be conceptually useful?

• How is the knowledge of (our own) emotions changed by interaction with media?

• What is the impact of social context on the genesis of emotions?

• How do social media affect the emotional experience of young media users (digital stress, self-expression, digital health)?

• Does permanent networking give rise to new forms of "digital affect culture" (Döveling & Seyfert, 2023) and if so, how can these forms be empirically identified?

• To what extent are emotions taken into account in modeling media literacy?

• What is the significance of emotional experience in media appropriation concepts?

Submissions focusing on specific emotions (e. g. vicarious embarrassment, schadenfreude) and their connection to media content ranges and types of media use are also welcome.

Abstracts with a maximum length of 6,000 characters (including blank spaces) can be submitted to the merz-editorial team (merz@jff.de) until January 13, 2025. Please upload your abstracts at https://www.merz-zeitschrift.de/about/submissions. Submissions should follow the merzWissenschaft layout specifications, available at https://www.merz-zeitschrift.de/manuskriptrichtlinien/. The length of the articles should not exceed a maximum of approximately 4,000 words. Please feel free to contact Susanne Eggert, Fon: +49.89.68989.152, E-Mail: susanne.eggert@jff.de

DEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• 13 January 2025: Submission of abstracts to merz@jff.de

• 3 February 2025: Decision on acceptance/ rejection of abstracts

• 19 May 2025: Submission of articles

• May/June 2025: Assessment phase (double-blind peer review)

• June/July 2025: Revision phase (multi-phase when appropriate)

• End of November 2025: merzWissenschaft 2025 published