Panic! Affect Contagion, Mimesis and Suggestion in the Social Field

Abstract

This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the social usefulness of fear in the face of some current arguments to the contrary.

Habit and Affect: Revitalizing a Forgotten History

“…The apparent contradictions between materialism and antimaterialist concepts are integral to his study of habit and instincts (McDougall, 1911: 19), which he defined as the 'essential springs or motive powers of all thought and action'. Although McDougall is often credited with championing nature, his account weaves together nature and nurture in ways which are an interesting precursor to contemporary theories of affect in social theory, and particularly those which draw from the work of the American psychologist, Silvan Tomkins (see Gibbs, 2008;Sedgwick, 2003). 4 In McDougall's reflections on the mind/body problem (more usually referred to as the psycho-physical problem), the close relationship of habit to neo-vitalism and psychic research is clearly visible (McDougall, 1911).…”

Street Protests and Affects on YouTube Investigating DIY Videos of Violent Street Protests as an Archive of Affect and Event Desire

“…In this perspective using DIY media technologies to prepare for, document, or recall an event does not necessarily disconnect the producer from the experience of affective 'liveness' (Auslander 1999), but may be a way of charging, accessing, or recirculating the eventness of the protest space through affective feedback loops (Papacharissi 2015). In using this perspective, this article adds to an ongoing and increasing investigation of the affective-political potential and characteristics of (digital) media (Blackman 2012;Kuntsman 2012;Garde-Hansen & Gorton 2013;Benski & Fisher 2014;Grusin 2010;Featherstone 2010;Gibbs 2008;Munster 2013;Parikka 2010;McCosker 2015;Papacharissi 2015) as we try to understand the way in which digital mediation is involved in affective experiences of eventness. This also distinguishes our approach from other ways of interpreting similar material as e.g.…”

The online crowd: a contradiction in terms? On the potentials of Gustave Le Bon's crowd psychology in an analysis of affective blogging

“…The article contributes to the developing field of research dealing with media affect and contagious communication (Blackman 2012;Featherstone 2010;Gibbs 2008;Sampson 2012), with affect or intensity as a force motivating media circulation (Grusin 2010;Lash and Lury 2007), and with affect as a key factor in contemporary mediated communities and relations (Boltanski 1999;Knudsen 2009). This interest in 'the ways in which feelings and affective states can reverberate in and out of cyberspace, intensified (or muffled) and transformed through digital circulation and repetition' (Kuntsman 2012, 1) attests to a growing dissatisfaction with media-analytical paradigms that focus too narrowly on discursive processes of interpretation or semantic encoding/decoding.…”