Introduction to Special Issue “Morality in Political and Public Debates. What is Beyond Moral Framing?”

Abstract

This special issue seeks to address this gap by presenting a comprehensive collection of both theoretical and practical insights into moral language, argumentation, and evaluations within politicized environments. Our overarching objective encompasses three main facets. We investigate how studies in communication, media, and behavioral sciences can contribute to the understanding of morality. The special issue also evaluates the ways in which interdisciplinary approaches shed light on the evolving dynamics of moral politics, including the formation of in-group and out-group identities. Finally, the contributions scrutinize the extent to which contemporary understandings of public discourse and socio-political tensions enrich discourse on morality. Rather than merely presenting isolated instances of public moralization and its consequences, this special issue initiates a timely and much-needed scholarly dialog concerning the public discourse and sentiments surrounding moral issues.

Introduction

Ten years ago, Jonathan Haidt proposed a new approach to characterizing moral psychology in the 21st century (Haidt, 2013). One of his novel ideas was to pay attention to the issues of collective integrity and coherence when studying moral domains. This suggestion was based on his observation that “morality binds and blinds” (p. 292), acknowledging the fact that morality can simultaneously bind and polarize groups and individuals.

This special issue is, in many ways, inspired by Haidt’s “binds and blinds” thesis. With contributions spanning several disciplines, including behavioral sciences, sociology, political communication, and related fields, this collective volume argues that morality has the power to unite and divide contemporary societies. Morality has a binding power when it helps people find value-based common ground. The communal trust in social norms and confidence in collective norm compliance are necessary for humans to operate as a functional society. However, morality can also divide society when it is used as a sanctioning mechanism to bring into conformity those who do not comply with established norms and values. Given the circumstances, corrective actions through material, symbolic, or discursive sanctions are often applied to offenders. Importantly, the dialectics of unifying and divisive moral power are anchored in social group logic, asserting that belonging to a powerful and influential group benefits its members and makes the group more attractive to others. Conversely, moral evaluations can imply that groups without a strong moral compass produce individuals with weaker social ties, which makes these communities less appealing to both in and out-group members. We postulate that group-based moral comparisons and reinforcing collective moral superiority contribute significantly to contemporary political conflicts (similar ideas presented by Capelos et al., 2021).

In politics, social groups compete with one another, and the unity of a political camp often correlates with electoral success. In conflicts, the value-driven moralizing rhetoric of political leaders often seeks to maintain unity among a given population and undermine the esprit de corps of its opponents. Moral conflicts represent ideological conflicts that stem from opposing worldviews, beliefs, and values (Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997). During moral conflicts, each camp seeks to challenge the reputation of its opponents and reaffirm its own legitimacy.

Previous studies have argued that emotions such as anger, contempt, guilt, shame, and pride accompany the moralizing rhetoric of conflicts (e.g., Haidt, 2003; Turner & Stets, 2006). With the growing influence of public opinion in the age of social media, the transparency of moral behavior has emerged as a desirable standard. Any deviation or the accusation of norm violation exposes individuals to criticism, prompting the loss of public face. The public humiliation of political opponents, through means like shaming, promotes asymmetric power relations in which humiliators claim control over the situation (e.g., Homolar & Löfflmann, 2021). Moralizing messages often target an opponent’s moral transgression and criticize the moral integrity of their words and actions. Emergent scholarship on character work and character assassination has become increasingly relevant in contexts where personal attacks on reputation dominate public discourses (Jasper et al., 2018; Shiraev et al., 2022).

Once considered a space of inclusion and deliberation, the Internet has turned into a battlefield of values. Studies have shown that the evolution of social media has been closely associated with the rise of emotional, moralizing rhetoric. This can be explained not only by the popularity of social networking sites but also by politicized intergroup conflicts, polarization, and coordinated disinformation efforts (Brady et al., 2023; Fisher, 2022; Simchon et al., 2022; Solovev & Pröllochs, 2023).

Nevertheless, as argued by Walter and Redlawsk (2023), partisan identification and ideological extremity are strong predictors for reacting to messages that evoke moral outrage. Double standards can also be activated in such contexts. For instance, when party identification is aligned with a politician who violates certain norms, there is a tendency to respond with less anger, contempt, disgust, and shame. Additionally, the likelihood of sharing morally emotive messages correlates with the strength of one’s political identity. Simply put, animated voters are more likely to share these types of political messages than centrists or those loosely affiliated with political parties (e.g., Brady et al., 2023). These findings have contributed to an increasing interest in moral politics in general and the practices of moralization in public debates in particular.

The extreme partisanship of contemporary moral debates has deepened the cleavage between political camps across the globe on a number of topics, including military conflicts, migration, racial politics, LGBTQ+ rights and gender issues, climate change, gun control, and taxes, to name a few. The politicization of science in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in political struggles between different groups promulgating diverging views and moral intuitions about the ways and principles to govern society. Although moral language has been prevalent in politics throughout history, fights between “good and evil” have become central in an overwhelming number of contemporary political disputes. Although recent research on moral framing and moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2004) has made a serious impact on the empirical analysis of political debates, there remains a lack of understanding regarding the dynamics and affective components of public moralization.

This special issue aims to fill this void by offering a cumulative body of conceptual and empirical knowledge on moral language, argumentation, and moral evaluations in politicized contexts. Our overarching goal is threefold. First, we explore how communication, media, and behavioral studies can support morality research. Second, we assess in what manner interdisciplinary approaches highlight the emergent aspects of moral politics, such as in-group and out-group constructions. Finally, we examine to what extent current insights into the nature of public debates and sociopolitical conflicts advance contemporary scholarship on morality. Therefore, rather than reporting random accounts of public moralization and its effects, this special issue launches a timely and long-needed scholarly discussion of the public interactions and emotions centered around issues of morality. Several important topics are discussed as follows.

Gabriella Szabó and Artur Lipiński utilized qualitative thematic analysis to uncover the political strategies used to either foster or diminish a collective sense of sympathy in Poland and Hungary in the first weeks of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. The findings reveal a striking disparity between the two countries, emphasizing the significance of a more nuanced moral language for political agendas in times of crisis.

Kirsten A. Eddy examines how elite political and media actors strategically leverage moral claims for partisan ends, transforming political identities, issues, and campaigns into zero-sum moral contests against their opponents. As U.S. political parties increasingly represent divergent and less heterogeneous groups of people, elite actors draw upon moral claims to attract and perform for particular ideological, religious, racial, and ethnic identity coalitions—often drawing from the same moral vocabulary to articulate opposing visions of democracy and civic life.

Rosa Sanchez Salgado and Linda Bos examine the relationship between moral foundations and emotions in current political and public debates. Employing emotion discourse analysis, this study analyzes appeals to moral foundations in European Parliament (EP) plenary debates on the topic of climate change and their relation to emotions. The authors show that the relationship between moral foundations and emotions depends on the narratives put forward by policymakers from different political groups. This study demonstrates that narratives promoting action-oriented and effective appeals to emotions, which are key in advancing environmental protection, are not the most prominent in EP debates.

Erin B. Hester explores young individuals’ beliefs about causality and feelings toward two social issues impacting the welfare of others: food insecurity and opioid addiction. The findings provide a description of attributions supporting a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between causality and emotion. Practical implications and opportunities for further investigation are discussed in relation to the broader goal of developing strategies that can amplify civic engagement.

Kristen Cole employs a theoretical and methodological framework of moral conflict theory informed by actor-network theory to better understand the socio-material entanglements—networks of human and non-human actors—that constitute political moral conflicts. She analyzes a case of moral conflict surrounding the issue of gun control found within an online debate forum that was initiated by the question: should guns be banned in America? Through a case analysis, she identifies key convergences and divergences in communications that facilitate coordination and cause incommensurability in conflict. These results reveal a new possibility for transcending political polarization through dialog that attempts to account for the moral demands of objects.

Franz Reiter and Jörg Matthes develop a framework to investigate how perceived dirty campaigning operates as a hierarchical construct that can impair democratic outcomes. They argue that current dirty campaigning goes beyond previously related forms of uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaigning techniques by additionally including disinformation campaigning. Using structural equation modeling with longitudinal measurement invariance and controlling for autoregressive associations, they found that perceived dirty campaigning increases anger, frustration, and disgust toward campaigns and increases distrust in politicians over time.

Sergei A. Samoilenko and John Cook argue that climate-related ad hominem argumentation, including personal attacks questioning an individual’s character, competence, or motives, remains understudied by scholars despite the pervasiveness of such attacks. This study adapts Walton’s (1998) critical framework for identifying and evaluating ad hominem attacks by analyzing the rhetorical ineffectiveness of such attacks against the climate community and developing critical responses. This article offers guidance for future inoculation interventions, including media literacy campaigns that raise awareness and understanding of ad hominem attacks used by contrarian organizations in misinformation campaigns targeting climate science.

Julia Lerner and Svetlana Stephenson examined the discourse surrounding the public shaming of celebrity emigrants in the first 3 months of the war in Ukraine to understand the meaning of public expressions of moral criticism in a context of national crisis and the rupture of collective bonds, specifically in the context of war. They show how the public shaming of celebrity emigrants acts as a vehicle of “patriotic” mobilization. Building upon the literature concerning the role of celebrity in modern society, particularly Jeffrey Alexander’s neo-Durkheimian analysis (Alexander, 2010), they show that by representing the focus of a collective identity, celebrities often become the anchors around which normative re-solidification could be most effectively performed. In their study, they draw attention to the way shaming can be employed not only to express moral indignation and publicly sanction these individuals but also to define the affective meanings of citizenship. They suggest that moral conflicts resulting in shaming can be simultaneously dramatized as a ritual denouncing deviants and as a performance expressing emotional belonging to the community of good citizens, which is perceived to be threatened by their deviation.

Finally, Jennifer Keohane argues that cancel culture rhetoric has become a central language for moral conflicts in polarized settings. In her thematic rhetorical analysis of two prominent figures who have claimed to be canceled, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, the author shows similar rhetorical moves despite different contexts. Drawing conclusions from their rhetorical strategies, this article contends that claiming to be canceled is an effective image repair maneuver in contemporary, polarized political landscapes. This strategy creates a moment of urgency and allows a speaker to chart a middle course between empowerment and disempowerment while identifying a transcendent context to take a stand against a defined moral ill.

Before delving into this special issue of nine total articles, we would first like to acknowledge the reviewers’ significant contributions to this special issue as this collection of academic work could not be possible without their meticulous reading of the manuscripts and their valuable suggestions. We are immensely grateful to Golfo Alexopoulos, Nino Antadze, Iccha Basnyat, Dorottya Egres, Peter Ellerton, Michael R. Finch, Helena Ivanov, Tyler Johnson, Andrew C. Jones, Zornitsa Keremidchieva, Gordana Lazić, Cindy Ma, Star Muir, Carsten Reinemann, Leslie J. Reynard, Lynn E. Patyk, Deborah D. Sellnow-Richmond, Kevin A. Stein, Áron Szászi, Kevin B. Wright, Philipp Wunderlich, and Margarita Zavadskaya.