Emotional Governance Politics, Media, and Terror

by Richards, Barry

• ISBN13: 9780230008397
• ISBN10: 0230008399
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This lucid and original work argues for a new style of political leadership, one which pays deliberate and sophisticated attention to the emotional dynamics of the public.

Author Biography

BARRY RICHARDS is Professor of Public Communication and Head of Research in the Media School at Bournemouth University, UK. He was formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Human Relations at the University of East London. He has written extensively on psychosocial dimensions of politics and popular culture.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	p. viii
Introduction: The Case for Emotional Governance	p. 1
The three levels of emotional regulation	p. 1
Emotional governance	p. 4
The problem with psychology	p. 7
Preview	p. 10
A Democracy of Feelings	p. 19
Shaping the Public Mind	p. 21
Shapers and movers	p. 21
The psychosocial matrix	p. 24
The age of suspicion	p. 25
The reality of the group mind	p. 25
The Rise of Therapeutic Culture	p. 30
Audiences want affect	p. 30
The nature of the therapeutic	p. 33
The damaged princess	p. 35
Authentic expression or fake sentiment?	p. 40
Global Passions	p. 43
Charisma and its alternatives	p. 43
Boring: the problem of dis-passionate politics	p. 44
The inrushing world	p. 48
Parliaments of feeling	p. 52
The Bias Against Hope	p. 55
Journalism as Emotional Labour	p. 57
The emotional public sphere	p. 57
News consumption and anxiety management	p. 58
Containment and the media	p. 61
Emotional work in news production	p. 64
Keeping calm about terror	p. 66
Rottweilers Savage Democracy	p. 72
The national conversation	p. 72
The damage	p. 73
Cultures of attack	p. 78
Any passion is better than none?	p. 79
Challenging the Media Bias	p. 83
Emotional agendas in journalism	p. 83
Web space	p. 85
The three literacies	p. 87
Journalism and the regulation of public feeling	p. 88
The Search for Connection	p. 91
Politics as Emotional Labour	p. 93
Hoping for something	p. 93
Politics and popularity	p. 94
The leader as person	p. 96
Reparation	p. 99
Authenticity on stage	p. 101
The wrong hands on the levers of power?	p. 104
Poor Emotional Governance	p. 107
The anti-smirking campaign and other failures	p. 107
Terror and impoverished thought	p. 113
Terror in the Public Mind	p. 121
The Four Factors of Fear	p. 123
The political importance of the fear of terrorism	p. 123
Historical context: war without end?	p. 128
What makes us anxious?	p. 130
Some conclusions	p. 135
Terrorism and the Emotional Public	p. 137
Why and how to conduct an emotional audit	p. 137
Polls and passions	p. 138
Are terrorists on another planet?	p. 149
From Emotional Audit to Communication Strategy	p. 156
The binary media discourse of terror	p. 56
Public-media interactions	p. 162
Improving emotional governance around terror	p. 164
Repairing Leadership	p. 169
Market Failures	p. 171
The language of political marketing	p. 171
Political marketing and a political psychology of emotions	p. 172
Marketing and the crisis of leadership	p. 176
Fear, security and the limits of political marketing	p. 180
Deferring to Reality	p. 183
Emotional education	p. 183
Fantasies of renewal	p. 184
Leadership and reality	p. 188
Notes	p. 195
References	p. 205
Author Index	p. 215
Subject and Name Index	p. 218
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