Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, U. of London, United Kingdom
How to deal with extreme online violence? Despite emotional energy has been described as fundamental for coping with disruptive work we still know little about how to refuel it under conditions of extreme emotional violence and institutional fragility. Through the case of Big Pragma, the association grouping the most active anti-vaxxers fake news fighters in France, we explain how actors refuel their energy to enact collective action. We introduce the term moral energy replenishment which outlines that energy replenishment happens in the interaction between the moral duty, emotion work, and the construction of the collective sense of institution. We detail the mechanism by which actors dealing with fake news replenish their emotional energy emphasizing the role of the reinforcement of the moral duty, the construction of a sense of belonging to a collective, and the creation of protective agency. We contribute to the theorization of emotional energy replenishment by showing the importance of moral duty and the intersection of emotions and the construction of institutions.
