Emotions Online: Feelings and Affordances of Digital Media

Digital media have become deeply immersed in our lives, heightening both hopes and fears of their affordances. While the internet, mobile phones, and social media offer their users many options, they also engender concerns about their manipulations and intrusions. Emotions Online explores the visions that shape responses to media and the emotional regimes that govern people's engagements with them.

This book critically examines evidence on the role of digital media in emotional life. Offering a sociological perspective, and using ideas from science and technology studies and media studies, it explores:

. The dimensions and operations of the online emotional economy

. Growing concerns about online harms and abuse, especially to children

. 'Deep-fakes' and other forms of image-based abuse

. The role of hope in shaping online behaviours

. 'Digital wellbeing' and its market

. COVID-19's impacts on perceptions of digital media and Big Tech

. Growing challenges to centralised control of the internet, and the implications for future emotional life

The book breaks new ground in the sociological study of digital media and the emotions. It reveals the dynamics of online emotional regimes showing how deceptive designs and algorithm-driven technologies serve to attract and engage users. As it argues, digital media rely on the emotional labours of many people, including social media influencers and content moderators who make the internet seem smart. The book provides an invaluable overview of the evidence and debates on the role of digital media in emotional life and guidance for future research, policy, and action.

數位媒體已深深融入我們的生活，提升了人們對其功能的期望和擔憂。雖然互聯網、手機和社交媒體為用戶提供了許多選擇，但也引發了對其操控和侵入的擔憂。《Emotions Online》探討了塑造對媒體回應的視野以及統治人們與媒體互動的情感體制。

本書從社會學的角度批判性地研究了數位媒體在情感生活中的作用。它借鑒了科學技術研究和媒體研究的思想，探討了以下問題：

- 在線情感經濟的維度和運作方式
- 對線上傷害和虐待的日益關注，尤其是對兒童的影響
- 「深偽」和其他形式的基於圖像的虐待
- 希望在塑造線上行為中的作用
- 「數位福祉」及其市場
- COVID-19對數位媒體和大型科技公司的影響
- 對互聯網集中控制的日益挑戰，以及對未來情感生活的影響

本書在數位媒體和情感的社會學研究中開創了新的領域。它揭示了線上情感體制的動態，展示了欺騙性設計和算法驅動技術如何吸引和吸引用戶。正如本書所主張的，數位媒體依賴許多人的情感勞動，包括社交媒體影響者和內容審核人員，他們使互聯網看起來聰明。本書提供了對數位媒體在情感生活中的作用的證據和辯論的寶貴概述，並為未來的研究、政策和行動提供指導。

Alan Petersen is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Australia. His research interests include the sociology of health and medicine, science and technology studies, and gender studies. He is the author of Digital Health and Technological Promise: A Sociological Inquiry (2018), The Politics of Bioethics (2011), and The Body in Question: A Socio-Cultural Approach (2007), and co-author of The New Genetics and the Public's Health (2001) and Poststructuralism, Citizenship and Social Policy (1999), among others.

Alan Petersen是澳洲蒙納士大學社會科學學院的社會學教授。他的研究興趣包括健康與醫學社會學、科學與技術研究以及性別研究。他是《數位健康與技術承諾：一個社會學探究》（2018）、《生物倫理學的政治》（2011）和《問題中的身體：一種社會文化方法》（2007）的作者，也是《新基因學與公共衛生》（2001）和《後結構主義、公民身份和社會政策》（1999）等書的合著者。