This week I learned about the intersection between affect, media, and empathy. In the reading, it discussed how there is a unique connection between affect and ideology. One example from the reading is “radio broadcasts helped protesters coordinate and disseminate the message about oppression to broader publics. The affective attunement enabled through the radio broadcasts presented a way for diverse publics to tune in and emotionally align with the movement.” (4) Media and its skillful use allow us to really feel the weight of these movements/issues, which relates to affect publics. The lecture honed in on how our personal connection and feelings to issues (empathy) — faced by ourselves, but especially by other people — can be used to combat and better understand prejudice, conflict, and inequality. In the same breath, however, empathy can exacerbate inequality because people — in their good intentions to connect with and understand people — may feel emboldened enough to advocate on others’ behalf even though they can’t relate to the issues and are not even that knowledgeable about it. This places those that are underprivileged and have less access even further out of the conversation, establishing roles of “empathizer” and “sufferer.” The readings also discussed issues of privacy, mainly why it is valuable and what happens when our privacy is encroached on. From the lecture, it talks about how surveillance harms us due to it reinforcing social control and subconsciously influencing our behavior.

These topics relate to my final project in the sense that affect publics and empathy make online communities stronger, especially within hate groups. They have no empathy for anyone else, but they have empathy for each other and the issues they collectively face, which validates their toxic emotions/ideologies and emboldens them to carry out the acts that they do. Also, in my final project, I would like to explore the idea of stricter surveillance, and after this week’s readings, I believe it might be a viable option when thinking about hate groups, although tighter surveillance is a terrible idea in general. Surveillance causes us to more purposefully dictate our actions in order to stay within boundaries of social acceptance/norms, and if what Incels put online anonymously were more purposefully traced back to them and monitored in a way that encroaches on their privacy, they might feel less inclined to speak the way they do in fear of social stigma/isolation.