From tech to tact: emotion dysregulation in online communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Recent theorizing argues that online communication technologies provide powerful, although precarious, means of emotional regulation. We develop this understanding further. Drawing on subjective reports collected during periods of imposed social restrictions under COVID-19, we focus on how this precarity is a source of emotional dysregulation. We make our case by organizing responses into five distinct but intersecting dimensions wherein the precarity of this regulation is most relevant: infrastructure, functional use, mindful design (individual and social), and digital tact. Analyzing these reports, along with examples of mediating technologies (i.e., self-view) and common interactive dynamics (e.g., gaze coordination), we tease out how breakdowns along these dimensions are sources of affective dysregulation. We argue that the adequacy of available technological resources and competencies of various kinds matter greatly to the types of emotional experiences one is likely to have online. Further research into online communication technologies as modulators of both our individual and collective well-being is urgently needed, especially as the echoes of the digital push that COVID-19 initiated are set to continue reverberating into the future.

Do digital hugs work? Re-embodying our social lives online with digital tact

“…It is emergent in our timing, rhythm, language, posture and gestures, and, whether one knows it or not, it reflects an ability to mindfully design the mediators available in a digital place in a dynamic fashion so as to resource the right ones, in the right ways, at the right times. Digital tact, understood as such, is a values-rooted mindful approach to digitally mediated social interactions (see James et al, 2023 for discussion of 'mindful design' and digital tact as one manifestation of that): i.e., it assumes there to be some value structures orienting one in their social relations and that one is acting in alignment with them in a given situation (see Martin, 2021).…”