Media designed to evoke outrage for online attention
Outrage porn (also calledoutrage discourse,[1]outrage media andoutrage journalism)[2] is any type of media ornarrative designed to useoutrage to provoke strong emotional reactions for the purpose of expanding audiences or increasing engagement. The termoutrage porn was coined in 2009 byThe New York Times politicalcartoonist andessayistTim Kreider.[3][4][5][6]
Outrage porn is a term used to explain media that is created specifically to provoke anger or outrage among its consumers as a tool of theoutrage industrial complex.[7] It is characterized by insincere rage, umbrage and indignation without personal accountability or commitment.[8][9][6] Media outlets are often incentivized to feign or foster outrage as it leads to increased page views, sharing, and comments, which are all lucrative online behaviors.[10]Salon,Gawker, and affiliated websitesValleywag andJezebel have been noted for abusing the tactic.[11][8] Traditional media outlets, including television news andtalk radio outlets have also been characterised as being engaged in outrage media.[12]: 12–13
The term was first attributed to Tim Kreider in aNew York Times article in July 2009,[6][2] where Kreider said: "It sometimes seems as if most of the news consists of outrage porn, selected specifically to pander to our impulses to judge and punish and get us all riled up withrighteous indignation,"[3] though he also made a distinction between authentic outrage and outrage porn: "I'm not saying that all outrage is inherently irrational...outrage is healthy to the extent that it causes us to act against injustice."[3]
The term has also been frequently used byObserver media criticRyan Holiday.[8][13][14] In his 2012 bookTrust Me, I'm Lying, Holiday describedoutrage porn as a "better term" for a "manufactured online controversy," because "people like getting pissed off almost as much as they like actual porn."[15]
Tufts University professors Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj characterised outrage media as both a genre and a style of discourse, both of which attempt to provoke emotional responses such as anger, fear, and moral indignation through tactics such as overgeneralisation, sensationalism, misleading or false information, andad hominem attacks.[16][2][17] They also characterised it as being personality-centered and reactive (responding to already-reported news rather than breaking stories of its own).[12]: 7–8 In their 2009 study of political media in the United States, they found outrage journalism to be widespread, with 90 percent of all content analyzed including at least one example of it; and concluded that "the aggregate audience for outrage media is immense."[2]
In 2014, Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing at theWharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a study on the spread of emotions via social media and concluded that "anger is a high-arousal emotion, which drives people to take action... It makes you feel fired up, which makes you more likely to pass things on."[18] Additionally, online audiences may be susceptible to outrage porn in part because of their feeling of powerlessness to managers, politicians, creditors, and celebrities.[19]
^abcKreider, Tim (July 14, 2009)."Isn't It Outrageous?".The New York Times.Archived from the original on July 31, 2019. RetrievedMay 23, 2019.It sometimes seems as if most of the news consists of outrage porn, selected specifically to pander to our impulses to judge and punish and get us all riled up with righteous indignation.
^Kenny, Paula (September 28, 2018)."Have we become addicted to 'pseudo-outrage' in an image obsessed world?".Irish Examiner.Archived from the original on July 2, 2019. RetrievedMay 23, 2019.Tim Krieder ofThe New York Times was the first to coin the phrase 'outrage porn', and perhaps still has the best explanation for why it is so addictive. 'Like most drugs, it is not so much what it gives us, as what it helps us to escape.' 'It spares us the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.'
^abcSauls, Scott (2016).Befriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear.NavPress. pp. 44–45.ISBN978-1496418333.New York Times writer Tim Kreider coined the termoutrage porn to describe what he sees as our insatible search for things to be offended by
^abBerry, Jeffrey M.; Sobieraj, Sarah (2016).The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility (Studies in Postwar American Political Development). OUP US.ISBN978-0190498467.
^Brendan, Michael (March 14, 2014)."Why we're addicted to online outrage".The Week.Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. RetrievedMay 23, 2019.Over at Beta BeatRyan Holiday writes about 'outrage porn', the steady stream of insincerely performed umbrage and gulping hysteria that seeps like superconcentrated vinegar out of the web's pores every moment of every day.
Berry, Jeffrey M.; Sobieraj, Sarah (2014).The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility (e-book ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0199928972.
Smith, Tobin (2019).Foxocracy: Inside the Network's Playbook of Tribal Warfare (e-book ed.). Diversion Books.ISBN978-1635766622. (Page numbers cited correspond to theePub edition.)
Sobieraj, Sarah; Berry, Jeffrey M. (2011). "From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio, and Cable News".Political Communication.28 (1):19–41.doi:10.1080/10584609.2010.542360.S2CID143739086.
