Translating and transforming emotions: an exploration of the role of politicians’ emotional storylines in an energy controversy in the Netherlands

Recent research on policy controversies challenges us to rethink classical distinctions between angry citizens and rational politicians. Interpretive studies demonstrate empirically that politicians and citizens discursively express emotions and use rational arguments. These insights encouraged this explorative study into the ways governing actors discursively express emotions and how these relate to expressed emotions by other actors in an energy controversy. Based on a thematic analysis of 1,852 newspaper articles in the case of the gas-quakes controversy in the Netherlands – where gas production induced earth quakes – we empirically show that politicians reinterpret emotions expressed by the public through emotional storylines. Reinterpreting emotions of the public by politicians takes place in two ways: translating and transforming. Local and regional politicians in the way they talk about emotions translate the expressed feelings of the Groningen population into emotional storylines directed towards national politicians, and through that put pressure on national decision-making. National politicians, when attempting to discursively transform the publics’ emotions, (1) argue to take rational actions despite the publics’ emotions, (1) and while expressing empathy for negative emotions, suggest alternative emotions. As such, politicians’ storylines either serve as a vehicle for making the discursive expression of emotions part of the decision making and policy making processes, or their storylines serve to negate or transform unwanted emotions.