Emotions, Morality, and Political Participation Behaviors in Online Activism

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter analyzes emotional expressions and corresponding moral dimensions in messages posted on the Chinese social media Weibo, and the participation character of public responses online, modeling their emergence and trajectories, and explaining the conditions that are necessary for them to evolve. Through statistical and qualitative interpretative analyses of a sample of observed emotions of Weibo posts over the course of 26 days in the Quangang carbon nine leak incident, as online environmental activism in 2018, we reveal that (1) different emotions exert miscellaneous effects on participation behaviors; (2) the same emotion would have disparate effects on different types of participation behaviors; and (3) the occurrence of moral dimensions especially promoted the generation and expression of activists’ emotions, which were magnified and strengthened through their spread on Weibo. Emotional expressions and their moral dynamics have shaped, but also been shaped by, the nature of the event and specific sociopolitical context and experience. The implications advance the understudied complexity between emotions, morality, and political participation behaviors in online activism in the authoritarian context.