Emotional Dynamics of Political Scandals and Scandalisations

Scandal is very often defined through the public moral outrage; however, the nature of this emotion in the scandal research has barely ever been really investigated. My theoretical work on the role of emotions in the political scandal discloses that: 1) moral outrage is not the automatic emotional reaction of the public, it is a result of emotio-discursive work; 2) emotio-discursive work is a dynamic process with emotions articulated in it changing when the scandal progresses. These two premises are the basis for my empirical inquiry into the public emotion articulation during the political scandal. Its dynamic is analyzed with the trans-sequential discourse analysis of media coverage of German political scandals. Analyzed scandals differ in their extend and course, and thus in their emotional dynamics. The focus of this presentation will be these differences in emotio-discursive work of my cases. First, I will explain the logic of my case selection and comparison. Second, I will present the emotional dynamics of the full-blown scandal: its turn from excitement to moral outrage and from moral outrage to contempt. Third, I will compare this dynamic to the dynamic of the unsuccessful scandalization, scandalization which ended in no scandal, i.e. in no consequence for the politician, and therefore never reached the contempt phase. Then, the second comparision will be made between the typical complete scandal and the scandal which was interrupted by early resignation of the politician. Last, comparison of the unsuccessful scandal and interrupted scandal will be drawn: Does the emotional dynamics of both cases end in moral outrage or does the emotional dynamics of the interrupted scandal, i.e. involuntary unfullfilled scandal, have a tendency to be continued in some way?