Perspectives on emotion in the digital age

Emotions are central to the human experience. As people's daily lives are increasingly infused with digital activities, it has become all the more important to understand how online experiences impact emotional experiences and vice versa. In this chapter, the authors first define emotion and provide overviews of four major traditions of emotion research that have, to varying degrees, been incorporated into media-based research. Second, they discuss the extent to which digital media may have altered the intensity and consequences of emotional experiences. Finally, they reflect on key theories at the intersection of emotion and digital media and how future research and theory might evolve to better reflect the digital media environment. Throughout this chapter, the authors consider each emotion tradition as a lens through which scholars can approach the study of emotion in the digital media landscape, offering suggestions on how to more fully integrate each tradition into related research.