Strategic communication studies usually consider emotions as psychological effects of communication or as an influence on people's understanding of an issue. In the first case, emotions like joy or desire result from strategic communication initiatives. The second instance conceptualises emotions as obstacles to correct understanding, such as when fear or love makes people irrational and less capable of grasping things. Monica Porzionato writes that strategic communication campaigns are often "designed to either elicit a certain emotional response from selected publics or to find the right communicative formula to overcome people's psycho-emotional barriers."
The problem with these two understandings of emotions, Porzionato argues, is that they tend to consider emotions merely as recognisable and definable human experiences, existing separately from communication. They do not account for instances when emotional experiences are communicative drives in social life, even if no individual consciously recorded them. They also disregard how strategic communication hinders and promotes the existence of such collective feelings.
In the context of the climate crisis, Porzionato explores how an understanding of emotions as collective feelings is mobilised by strategic communication to influence how climate change is understood and addressed in Venice. She performed an atmospheric ethnography by walking around Venice with a GoPro camera, observing people's movements and interactions with flooding waters. She also utilises document retrieval and interviews. The empirical materials were then analysed using a narrative analysis.
The study finds that the strategic communication of two actors, Venice's municipality and a group of local scientists, influences how climate change is understood in Venice. It aims to either sustain or resist three collective ways of feeling floods: as a wonderful and unproblematic Venetian experience, as exceptional events solved by technology, or as dangerous and unavoidable problems for the city and its inhabitants. Consequently, Porzionato shows that how climate change is understood in this vulnerable setting depends on how well strategic communication mobilises people's feelings towards the tangible manifestations of climate change around them.
"Thank you for letting me read this important and beautiful work. This is a great honour and great responsibility," said Professor Sine Just of Roskilde University after being appointed external reviewer at the public defence.
A central part of Professor Just's review pertained to Porzionato's understanding of communication as transmission of affect. "This is the most difficult question I am going to ask you," Just said. "How can we, on the one hand, talk about communication as something that is not transmission but as constitution, and on the other as transmission of affect?"
"Communication is constitutive because it is transmissible," Porzionato responded. "If communication is understood as transmission of affect, it becomes constitutive through the way feelings are shared in the process of creating meanings. It is a transmission that is a continuous flow of affecting and getting affected. Communication is what allows this force to take place."
After Professor Just's review and the examination committee had asked their questions, they privately debated Porzionato's thesis and defence. After roughly 30 minutes, they rematerialised.
"On behalf of the examination committee, it is with great pleasure that I now announce that Monica has passed her doctoral exam," said Henrik Merkelsen, the Department of Communication's examination committee member.