Guilt and innocence – Emotional discourses in online discussions on climate change and housing

Abstract

This paper explores the discourses of guilt and innocence represented in Finnish online communication in different platforms. Guilt and innocence represent emotional reactions, which are discursively constructed and connected to values and social norms. We pose two research questions to our study: how are the nuances of guilt and innocence presented in online discussions, and how are self- and other-centered discourses constructed in different platforms. The data of the study consists of online discussions concerning people’s mundane housing in relation to climate change appearing in the comments on blogs and in the discussion threads on an anonymous online discussion forum. By combining Greimas’ semiotic square with discourse analysis, we show how the categories of guilt and innocence as well as not guilty and not innocent highlight the nuanced ways in which polarizing perspectives to self- and other-centered discourses appear on different platforms. Our research contributes to the discussion on environmental communication by revealing more than just two opposing poles; our analysis shows the fine-tuned differences intertwined with gendered discourses constructed in discussions on different platforms. While feeling guilty or not innocent in the blogs is mostly connected with the participant’s own actions of not doing enough, assigning guilt to someone else seems to be common on the anonymous discussion forum. Still, the analysis indicates that while community norms and expectations shape the discourses they do not determine how the discourses turn out.