Research is fascinating!

I wanted to focus on precisely the questions that interest me: How do people engage in discussion with one another? How are opinions formed? And how does social media influence this?

In Duisburg, I found the ideal environment for this in the research group ‘Psychological Processes of Education in Social Media’. The combination of psychology and computer science is a perfect fit for my research.

Not at all. At first, I was actually rather daunted by statistics. I mainly chose to study psychology because I’m interested in people and social dynamics.

The turning point came during my semester abroad in the US. That’s when I realised that statistics isn’t something you need a natural talent for. It’s something you can learn, and suddenly it enabled me to answer questions that I’d been thinking about anyway.

We’re constantly observing things in everyday life and asking ourselves: what’s actually going on there? I think it’s absolutely brilliant that we can satisfy this curiosity. Data gives us the opportunity to investigate such questions scientifically. For example, many people perceive society as being divided. However, the data shows us that this division tends to be overestimated.

It surprised even me, but I’ve really fallen in love with research. I really value working independently and having autonomy.

I also really enjoy teaching. I find it incredibly enriching to be in constant dialogue with the ‘next generation’.

What’s more, I’m surrounded every day by very intelligent and supportive people, and I’m constantly learning new things. It’s a wonderful feeling to work on questions together and exchange ideas with people who share the same curiosity.

Put simply, I look at the impact that morally charged content has on the general public online here, and how this influences our debates.

I’m particularly interested in how people communicate online, how different groups interact, and how social discussions unfold there.

It all began with research into misinformation and conspiracy theories. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt that our debates had shifted from factual to moral ones.

I’d already observed similar dynamics in the US, particularly in political discussions. Social media naturally plays a major role in this, because we’re constantly confronted not only with information, but also with opinions and heated discussions.

At some point, I asked myself: what is actually happening in our debates right now? Can we still adhere to traditional principles of debate? Can we still listen, let others finish speaking and reach compromises? Or are we, in fact, merely playing a game of moral ping-pong, throwing moral objections back and forth?

Moral outrage arises when we feel that someone is violating fundamental values. So we see something and think: ‘That’s wrong’ or ‘That’s unfair’. When, for example, a politician says something that many perceive as exclusionary, it often triggers waves of outrage that spread rapidly on social media.

However, this is not just about feelings such as anger, annoyance or contempt. It often gives rise to a desire to do something about it, such as criticising someone or demanding consequences.

On platforms such as Instagram, X or TikTok, we are constantly seeing content that takes the moral high ground. Outraged posts often attract a great deal of attention. They are commented on, shared and spread more frequently.

Social media is therefore the perfect setting for moral outrage. It literally rewards outrage.

I’m not a big fan of the term because it’s highly politically charged. What’s more, it is sometimes exploited to suggest that public gaffes, controversial opinions or statements would immediately lead to ‘cancellation’. However, research to date does not support this. That aside, moral outrage does, first and foremost, serve an important social function. It helps us to defend norms and values.

What I find more interesting is the question of how social media is changing these processes: how quickly outrage arises, whether we actually feel it or merely express it because we assume it is socially expected, and how this influences social discourse.

For example, we conduct experiments in which participants are shown different social media feeds. We then observe how they react to them.

We also analyse the language used in social media posts. In doing so, we distinguish between whether someone is simply annoyed or is actually taking a moral stance – for example, by writing something like: ‘That’s wrong’ or ‘That goes against our values’.

Yes. In existing studies, we have seen that people eventually become desensitised when they are repeatedly confronted with a breach of norms. That is why we assumed that they would also become desensitised when repeatedly confronted with the outrage of others. However, this is not always the case. When we see a lot of outraged posts, it tends to sustain our own outrage. In other words, such emotions last longer. We are now looking at what this might mean in the long term in follow-up studies.

I’m interested in whether social media is changing our debates in the long term. Will we eventually become desensitised by constant exposure to outrage? Or is moral outrage becoming the norm?

After all, moral outrage can also be a positive thing: it draws attention to injustice and can spur social change. At the same time, I wonder whether we sometimes talk more about each other than with each other online, and what that means for social cohesion.

These are big questions to which there are no easy answers. But that is precisely what makes research so exciting for me.

Hannah Logemann, Media Psychology, Phone +49 203 379-1324, hannah.logemann@uni-due.de

Editing: Janina Balzer, janina.balzer@uni-due.de