Emotion in the Digital Age examines how emotion is understood, researched and experienced in relation to practices of digitisation and datafication said to constitute a digital age. The overarching concern of the book is with how emotion operates in, through, and with digital technologies. The digital landscape is vast, and as such, the authors focus on four key areas of digital practice: artificial intelligence, social media, mental health, and surveillance. Interrogating each area shows how emotion is commodified, symbolised, shared and experienced, and as such operates in multiple dimensions. This includes tracing the emotional impact of early mass media (e.g. cinema) through to efforts to programme AI agents with skills in emotional communication (e.g. mental health chatbots). This timely study offers theoretical, empirical and practical insight regarding the ways that digitisation is changing knowledge and experience of emotion and affective life. Crucially, this involves both the multiple versions of digital technologies designed to engage with emotion (e.g. emotional-AI) through to the broader emotional impact of living in digitally saturated environments. The authors argue that this constitutes a psycho-social way of being in which digital technologies and emotion operate as key dimensions of the ways we simultaneously relate to ourselves as individual subjects and to others as part of collectives. As such, Emotion in the Digital Age will prove important reading for students and researchers in emotion studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and related fields.

Fifteen thought-provoking essays engage in an innovative dialogue between cultural studies of affect, feelings and emotions, and digital cultures, new media and technology. The volume provides a fascinating dialogue that cuts across disciplines, media platforms and geographic and linguistic boundaries.

This book explores the experiences of migrant mothers through the lens of the online communities they have created and participate in. Examining the ways in which migrant mothers build relationships with each other through these online communities and find ways to make a place for themselves and their families in a new country, it highlights the often overlooked labour that goes into sustaining these groups and facilitating these new relationships and spaces of trust. Through the concept of ‘digital community mothering,’ the author draws links to Black feminist scholarship that has shed light on the kinds of mothering that exist beyond the mother–child dyad. Providing new insights into the experiences of women who mother ‘away from home’ in this contemporary digital age, this volume explores the concepts of imagined maternal communities, personal maternal narratives, and migrant maternal imaginaries, highlighting the ways in which migrant mothers imagine themselves within local, national, and diasporic maternal communities. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students with interests in migration and diaspora studies, contemporary motherhood and the sociology of the family, and modern forms of online sociality. Winner of The Australian Sociological Association Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book published in Australian sociology, 2020-2021.

How can you create meaningful connections with customers in the digital space? The rapid emergence of new technologies has revolutionized the way companies build relationships and interact with their customers. Today, it’s more important than ever to have an emotional understanding of customers and how they feel about a product, service, or business, even when your primary interactions are via digital channels. Affected goes beyond influencing behaviors to understanding cognition and emotion as a way to better connect with customers in the digital space. In it, Wrigley and Straker offer a new approach—one that examines channel relationships and useful concepts for clarifying and refining the emotional meaning behind company strategy and their relationship to corresponding channels. Using case study examples from and over a decade of primary research in the area, they discuss the process and impact of such emotionally aware channel designs. Spanning entrepreneurial start-up techniques of wunderkind artist Cj Hendry through to the lucrative retail sector of luxury brand Burberry, this seminal book offers multi-channel design approach that can show companies how to select, design, and maintain digital engagements based on their strategy and industry needs. Shows businesses how they can better understand and engage with customers digitally Demonstrates how to gain competitive advantage by integrating design methods into corporate strategy Provides multi-channel approaches for how businesses can select, design, and maintain digital engagements Establishes a clear framework for analysing and applying the right strategy for your digital engagement Connecting and engaging with customers is pivotal to business success, but in the digital space the old methods just won’t cut it. With Affected, you’ll find the tools and techniques you need to find your customers where they are.

Research on Emotion in Organizations comprises chapters describing multidisciplinary research into affect, emotion, and mood in organizations at all levels of analysis, including within-person variation, individual differences, interpersonal exchanges, groups, and organizations.

"The 21st century has seen rapid and profound technological innovations that have fundamentally changed our media environment. Our now unlimited access to information, entertainment, and social interaction is simply unprecedented. It is undeniable that this new media landscape impacts important aspects of our daily experiences - how we spend our time, who we connect with, what we know about each other and the world around us. But at a deeper level, this newer, digitized media age influences a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human: our emotional experiences. Given the centrality of emotions to both psychological and physical well-being, as well as to shaping human behavior, understanding how our current media environment impacts our emotional experiences - in ways both helpful and harmful - is critical to understanding the role media use plays in emotional development, life experiences, and societal events"--

What happens when media technologies are able to interpret our feelings, emotions, moods, and intentions? In this cutting edge new book, Andrew McStay explores that very question and argues that these abilities result in a form of technological empathy. Offering a balanced and incisive overview of the issues raised by ‘Emotional AI’, this book: Provides a clear account of the social benefits and drawbacks of new media trends and technologies such as emoji, wearables and chatbots Demonstrates through empirical research how ‘empathic media’ have been developed and introduced both by start-ups and global tech corporations such as Facebook Helps readers understand the potential implications on everyday life and social relations through examples such as video-gaming, facial coding, virtual reality and cities Calls for a more critical approach to the rollout of emotional AI in public and private spheres Combining established theory with original analysis, this book will change the way students view, use and interact with new technologies. It should be required reading for students and researchers in media, communications, the social sciences and beyond.

Emotions, Technology, and Social Media discusses the ways the social media sphere uses emotion and technology, and how each of these has become part of the digital culture. The book explores this expression within a psychological theoretical framework, addressing feelings about social media, and its role in education and knowledge generation. The second section investigates the expression of feelings within social media spaces, while subsequent sections adopt a paradigm of active audience consumption to use social media to express feelings and maintain social connectivity. - Discusses the significant relationships between Web 2.0 technologies and learning traits - Presents studies about Facebook usage and individual emotional states - Investigates the shared emotions in the construction of "cyberculture - Shows the extent to which scientists use social media in their work, and the ways in which they use the social media - Analyzes the consequences of the online disinhibition effect - Examines YouTube as a source of opinions and discussions which can be used to track the emotions evoked by videos and the emotions expressed through textual comments - Details how Reddit users' media choices are emotionally useful and gratifying in the "memeplex - Links social interaction and the emotional life with that of digital devices and resources

For Readers of Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku, a New Look at the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Imagine a robotic stuffed animal that can read and respond to a child’s emotional state, a commercial that can recognize and change based on a customer’s facial expression, or a company that can actually create feelings as though a person were experiencing them naturally. Heart of the Machine explores the next giant step in the relationship between humans and technology: the ability of computers to recognize, respond to, and even replicate emotions. Computers have long been integral to our lives, and their advances continue at an exponential rate. Many believe that artificial intelligence equal or superior to human intelligence will happen in the not-too-distance future; some even think machine consciousness will follow. Futurist Richard Yonck argues that emotion, the first, most basic, and most natural form of communication, is at the heart of how we will soon work with and use computers. Instilling emotions into computers is the next leap in our centuries-old obsession with creating machines that replicate humans. But for every benefit this progress may bring to our lives, there is a possible pitfall. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control. And, as shown in movies like Her and Ex Machina, our society already holds a deep-seated anxiety about what might happen if machines could actually feel and break free from our control. Heart of the Machine is an exploration of the new and inevitable ways in which mankind and technology will interact. The paperback edition has a new foreword by Rana el Kaliouby, PhD, a pioneer in artificial emotional intelligence, as well as the cofounder and CEO of Affectiva, the acclaimed AI startup spun off from the MIT Media Lab.

The internet and the mobile phone have disrupted many of our conventional understandings of ourselves and our relationships, raising anxieties and hopes about their effects on our lives. In this second edition of her timely and vibrant book, Nancy Baym provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life Fully updated to reflect new developments in technology and digital scholarship, the book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how our talk about them echoes historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, and new relationships, and to maintain existing relationships in our everyday lives. The book combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as: Can mediated interaction be warm and personal? Are people honest about themselves online? Can relationships that start online work? Do digital media damage the other relationships in our lives? Throughout, the book argues that these questions must be answered with firm understandings of media qualities and the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used. This new edition of Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a richer understanding of digital media and everyday life.