Contempt and Compassion Frames in the Emotional Dynamics of Political Scandal

So far, in the political scandal research, two emotional frames were thoroughly analyzed: anger and sadness/disappointment. Their differentiation is based on the difference in responsibility/blame attribution: While anger frame ascribes responsibility to the scandalized politician, sadness/disappointment frame deploys justifications and excuses in order to reduce the ascribed responsibility and to diminish the appropriateness of the anger frame. However, my qualitative inquiry into the scandal dynamics reveals that this set of emotional frames might be insufficient to understand its complete emotional logic. Firstly, in my material – media coverage of a few political scandals – I was able to differentiate between anger and moral outrage, the latter being a strongly normatively embedded emotion based on sincere and objective interest in justice, by the way, truly hard to maintain in politics which is a genuinely partial and competitive activity of representing different interests of the people. Secondly, even though anger or moral outrage are often perceived as the scandal defining emotions, I do believe that contempt - obvious in the denunciative phase of scandal – is a much better signal of successful political scandal, because it strongly disdains the scandalized politician on the basis of, at least from the position of scandalizers, already established truthfulness of accusations. This frame, in contrast to anger or moral outrage, even though seemingly based on the same normative argumentation, actually tends to break this moral foundation by its overtly humiliating undertone, i.e. scolding of and irony in regard to the scandalized politician. Thirdly, empathy, or compassion, is a counter-frame of contempt, deployed by the supporters of the scandalized politician. With this frame the pity for the scandalized politician due to its unfair denunciative treatment is expressed. Thus, all in all I think that the current framework of emotional framing in scandals should be complemented by the dynamic perspective, stronger moral definition of anger and two subsequent frames: that of contempt and compassion.