ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out key features of our contemporary digital media ecology: the rise of emotionalization in social media and journalism; and the rise of emotional Artificial Intelligence (AI) and empathic technologies that simulate understanding of affect, emotion and intention (“empathic media”). It then examines the economics of emotion in the context of fake news and the politics of emotion in the context of political propaganda online. It reflects on the optimization of mediated emotions, the rise of empathic media and emotional AI, and what it portends for the future of disinformation. It highlights the turn to ever more granular targeting of the emotional state of individuals and groups, with real-time feedback to optimize content for target audiences. This may give rise to empathically optimized automated fake news and political campaigning that profiles not just online sentiment analysis but also citizens’ internal contexts (metabolic and experiential dimensions) and external contexts (such as regional and societal norms on emoting). The chapter concludes by considering what can be done to prevent citizens’ online and offline behaviour being turned into perpetually targeted data pools by bad actors seeking to target profiled users for commercial or political gain.
