Brené Brown Instagram – This is the second episode in our series on the possibilities and costs of living beyond human scale. In this episode, I talk to Dr. William Brady about his latest research on moral outrage and social media. We discuss the importance and helpfulness of moral outrage as an emotion and a catalyst for social change. AND, how dangerous things get when moral outrage is amplified by algorithms built to polarize, antogonize, and keep us engaged long enough to sell us some stuff.
We also talk about how social learning (reading cues that help us feel good about ourselves and help us gauge our sense of belonging) can fuel online moral outrage, and why the way we show up online is often completely different than what we do when we’re together IRL.
Last, as we head into an election year in the US, William talks about how his research team developed a polarization dictionary to identify how trolls and bots are used to intentionally create division and rage among social media users.
I appreciate y’all being on this learning adventure with me and my team. I’m torn between wanting to know and not wanting to know (insert ostrich emoji). But whether we know it or not, we feel the anxiety and overwhelm associated with technology, social media, and the sheer velocity of nonstop information, so I think it’s helpful to understand why.
In the spirit of trying to develop community and create a space for debate and discourse, we’re going to close comments on Instagram and Facebook, and open commenting on brenebrown.com (which is and has always been 100% ad free). Right now there’s a pretty basic commenting platform, but we’re working on new ways to support community conversations. We’ll test and learn together. ❤️ | Posted on 27/Mar/2024 20:41:42
