The team of the B02 project "Journalism and the Order of Emotions" at the CRC "Affective Societies" published a new study in Social Media + Society. "Challenging Journalistic Authority in the Networked Affective Dynamics of #Chemnitz" examines how journalistic authority was challenged on Twitter during the far-right riots in Chemnitz in 2018. The authors identify the emergence of affective publics, which are formed along shared as well as competing emotions, in the public and networked debate on the events in Chemnitz, which took place on Twitter primarily under the hashtag #Chemnitz. The authors found that predominantly far-right users mobilized a networked outrage directed at journalism as an institution. Based on these findings, the authors suggest a conceptualization of journalism as an affective institution whose authority is continually contested in public discourse. Such an understanding involves a profound questioning of the notion of objectivity that has been constitutive of journalism in the 20th century.

The article is published in English and open access and can be read online.