“Digital Madness and Emotional Virality: How Social Media Hijacks Emotion and Thought and Controls Our Minds”

 

From Cybernetics to Algorithmic Affect: Media Ecology, Emotional Governance, and the Anthropological Transformation of Digital Communication

 

ORCID: 0000-0003-3231-6248

Web of Science Researcher ID: I-7578-2016

Dr. Manoj Jinadasa (PhD in Digital Critical Media Studies, Newcastle University, UK)

Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department
Department of Mass Communication, University of Kelaniya

manojjina78@kln.ac.lk

 

Citation; Jinadasa, M (2025). “Digital Madness and Emotional Virality: How Social Media Hijacks Emotion and Thought and Controls Our Minds” by Blogger Manoj Jinadasa.https://manojjinadasa.blogspot.com/2026/01/digital-madness-and-emotional-virality.html

 

 Abstract 

This article examines the profound psychological, emotional, and neurological transformations induced by contemporary digital media environments, particularly social media platforms. Drawing on media ecology, cybernetics, affect theory, and philosophical anthropology, it argues that communication today is increasingly governed by algorithmic affect rather than human intentionality. Digital platforms manipulate attention, shape emotional responses, and accelerate the circulation of fabricated narratives, producing cognitive instability, emotional excess, and affective addiction. Historical foundations from Shannon and Weaver’s communication model, Wiener’s cybernetics, and McLuhan’s media theory provide a critical framework for understanding how digital media extend into human cognition and social behaviour. The study underscores the pressing need to reassess media pedagogy, theory, and research in light of the ethical, cognitive, and anthropological implications of algorithmically mediated social life.

Keywords: Digital Media, Algorithmic Affect, Emotional Virality, Media Ecology, Cybernetics

Introduction

The contemporary social world is no longer merely mediated; it is psychologically, emotionally, and neurologically reorganised through continuous exposure to digital and virtual media systems. Communication today operates within an environment where meaning, affect, and attention are algorithmically engineered rather than dialogically negotiated. This condition has deep historical roots in twentieth-century communication theory, particularly in Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s mathematical model of communication (1949), which conceptualised human interaction as a system of signal transmission vulnerable to noise, distortion, and loss. Although initially developed for electromechanical systems, their concepts of semantic and medium noise now offer critical insight into the affective disorientation and emotional manipulation embedded in contemporary digital media cultures.

 

This trajectory was further intensified through Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics in the 1950s and 1960s, which reframed communication as a feedback-driven relationship between humans and machines. Cybernetics marked a decisive shift in which communicative agency increasingly migrated from human intention to technological systems of control, prediction, and behavioural regulation. By the late twentieth century, these ideas evolved into machine learning, artificial intelligence, and platform-based communication architectures that now dominate global media ecologies. Across successive generations of telecommunications, communication has become less about human meaning-making and more about system optimisation, affective capture, and data extraction.

 

Marshall McLuhan’s famous proposition that “the medium is the message” gains renewed urgency in this context. Digital platforms do not simply transmit content; they restructure cognition, perception, and social relations. Contemporary virtual social media environments privilege speed, spectacle, and emotional immediacy over reflection, ethical responsibility, and epistemic validity. The viral circulation of fabricated narratives—such as digitally produced misinformation that mobilises mass grief or outrage within hours—demonstrates how emotional truth now frequently overrides factual truth in algorithmically governed media spaces.

 

This transformation is particularly evident among post-1990 generations, often described as digital natives. As Marc Prensky argues, these generations are cognitively shaped by immersive digital environments characterised by short attention cycles, instant gratification, and affective dependency. Media consumption increasingly becomes impulsive and sensory rather than interpretive and reflective. Yet, despite this profound shift, media education in many institutional settings continues to rely on classical philosophical, literary, and aesthetic frameworks that inadequately address the realities of algorithmic affect, emotional capitalism, and platform-driven communication.

 

This article argues that media anthropology must be rethought to account for the deep integration of media technologies into human cognition itself. Digital media no longer function as external tools; they are metabolised into bodily habits, emotional responses, and neural processes. Through continuous tactile engagement between brain, hand, and screen, communication becomes a form of instant affective consumption—momentarily stimulating but ontologically shallow. In this sense, contemporary media systems actively produce emotional excess, cognitive instability, and fabricated mythologies that circulate with extraordinary speed and influence. Understanding this condition requires a critical synthesis of media ecology, cybernetics, psychology, and philosophical anthropology.

 

 

Theoretical Context

 

Contemporary digital media environments require a theoretical framework that moves beyond linear and instrumental models of communication. Media today no longer operate merely as channels for transmitting messages; they function as ecological, cybernetic, and anthropological systems that actively shape human cognition, affect, and social relations. Early communication theory already anticipated this problem. Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver, in The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949), demonstrated that communication is not simply about transmission but is fundamentally vulnerable to distortion and misinterpretation. Their concept of semantic noise—disturbances affecting meaning rather than signal delivery—remains crucial for understanding contemporary digital media, where emotional amplification, misinformation, and algorithmic circulation frequently distort interpretation (Shannon & Weaver, 1949).

 

This insight was radically expanded by Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). McLuhan’s claim that “the medium is the message” (p. 7) marked a decisive epistemological shift, arguing that the technological form of media reshapes perception, cognition, and social organisation more profoundly than content itself. Media, for McLuhan, are “extensions of man” (1964, p. 19), reorganising sensory balance and habitual ways of thinking. Digital platforms intensify this condition by embedding media environments directly into everyday life, making mediation continuous rather than episodic.

 

Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) further deepened this understanding by introducing feedback, regulation, and control as core features of communicative systems. Wiener warned that communication technologies increasingly function as behavioural regulators rather than neutral tools, noting that humans exist within recursive systems of control and feedback (Wiener, 1948). In contemporary digital media, these cybernetic principles are embedded in algorithmic architectures that monitor behaviour, predict preferences, and continuously modulate attention and response.

 

Gilles Deleuze extended this cybernetic logic into a theory of power in “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (1992), arguing that modern power operates through continuous modulation rather than fixed institutional discipline. As Deleuze observes, control functions as “a self-deforming cast that will continuously change” (1992, p. 4). Algorithmic social media exemplify this condition, dynamically adjusting content flows to shape emotion, desire, and engagement.

 

Affect theory helps explain why emotion has become central to these systems. Brian Massumi, in Parables for the Virtual (2002), argues that affect operates pre-cognitively and autonomously, escaping rational interpretation (p. 35). Digital platforms exploit this autonomy by privileging speed, intensity, and emotional contagion, thereby bypassing reflective thought and ethical judgment.

 

Philosophical critiques of technology further situate this transformation within questions of human existence. Martin Heidegger, in The Question Concerning Technology (1954/1977), warned that modern technology “enframes” human life, reducing both humans and nature to resources (Bestand) for optimisation (p. 4). Within digital media environments, communication risks becoming a calculative process stripped of presence, responsibility, and authenticity.

 

Critical political economy reinforces this concern. Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967/1994) famously argued that “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation” (p. 1). Digital social media intensify this spectacle through continuous circulation of images, emotions, and narratives detached from lived reality. These dynamics are not accidental but economically productive. As Terry Eagleton (1990) notes, the aesthetic—and by extension affect—functions as a powerful mode of social regulation (p. 13).

 

Finally, media anthropology frames these developments as an anthropological transformation rather than a purely technological shift. Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp (2017) argue that media are now “deeply interwoven” with the construction of social reality itself (p. 34). Media technologies have become metabolically integrated into everyday practices, reshaping attention, emotion, and cognition at the level of lived experience.

 

Together, these theoretical perspectives establish the rationale for examining digital social media as systems of algorithmic affect that reorganise communication, cognition, and social life. The contemporary media condition thus represents not merely a crisis of misinformation or ethics, but a deeper anthropological challenge to how humans experience meaning, emotion, and communicative responsibility in a digitally saturated world.

 

 

Mediated Communication, Media Ecology, Cybernetics, and the Psychology of Digitalised Virtual Social Media

 

The contemporary world is characterised by a deeply mediated social psyche, shaped and intensified by constant media consumption. This condition can be historically traced back to the early 1950s, particularly the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, mechanical and mathematical engineering researchers at the American Bell Telephone Company. Their foundational research investigated how human messages could be transmitted through electromechanical wires, demonstrating how the human voice is encoded into electronic signals and subsequently decoded back into audible speech.

 

Crucially, Shannon and Weaver introduced the concepts of semantic noise and medium noise, which remain highly relevant for understanding present-day digital and virtualised social media cultures. These forms of noise offer critical insight into how meaning, emotion, and intention are disrupted, distorted, or strategically manipulated within today’s media-saturated and emotionally charged communication ecologies.

 

By the 1960s, Norbert Wiener’s pioneering work on human–machine communication further expanded these ideas through the development of cybernetics. Cybernetics explored feedback loops, control systems, and the interdependence between humans and machines, laying the groundwork for later technological trajectories. These developments gradually evolved into machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies by the 1980s, initiating successive generations of digital communication systems.

 

Across first-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation telecommunications—intertwined with globalisation and demassified media structures—communicative power increasingly shifted from human agency to technological media systems. Messages became technologically mediated, algorithmically structured, and platform-oriented, rather than grounded in human authenticity and cognitive depth.

 

In this context, Marshall McLuhan’s seminal proposition—that “the medium is the message”—remains profoundly significant. Communication technologies themselves shape human perception, cognition, and social organisation more powerfully than the content they transmit. Consequently, contemporary digital media environments increasingly prioritise technologically embedded communication structures over human presence, emotional authenticity, and ethical consciousness.

 

What this evolving, machine-learning-driven communication industry has produced today is a dramatically transformed media society and culture—one unfolding visibly in everyday life. Recently, a 30-second TikTok video fabricated a false narrative about the death of a young male celebrity. Despite being entirely fake, the video emotionally mobilised young audiences, prompting widespread circulation of mourning messages and condolence posts. Alarmingly, the content reached nearly two million views almost instantaneously.

 

This phenomenon persists despite the fact that, within state universities and departments of Mass Communication, media and communication continue to be taught largely through philosophical, aesthetic, and classical literature-based frameworks. Contemporary audiences operate within an entirely different cognitive and emotional register. Media consumption today is characterised by short-term illumination, instant gratification, heightened emotional affect, and sensational engagement. This mode of consumption is further intensified by digitally amplified “yellow journalism,” echoing early twentieth-century propaganda-style media practices now reborn on digital platforms.

 

This transformation is closely linked to the post-1990 generational shift, particularly the emergence of Generation Z as digital natives. As identified by Marc Prensky, these generations are socially and cognitively shaped by immersive digital environments. They are increasingly emotionally galvanised, driven by instant sensory stimulation, short attention cycles, and affective addiction to continuous media flows. Media consumption thus becomes less reflective and more impulsive, less interpretive and more visceral.

 

Understanding this shift constitutes a compelling intellectual challenge. It forces reconsideration of media pedagogy, curricula, and disciplinary frameworks. How can media studies meaningfully respond to both industry and societal demands while addressing the ethical, emotional, and cognitive consequences of digitally accelerated media environments?

 

Media anthropology today has become profoundly versatile because media technologies are no longer external tools but are metabolically integrated within human cognition itself. These transformations are not merely cultural or social; they are increasingly neurological, affective, and embodied. Contemporary media systems sell emotions instantly, intensify attraction, and normalise affective excess and psychological instability. Fabricated mythologies and false narratives circulate rapidly, directly stimulating short-term cognitive “firings” in media consumers.

 

This process is materially enacted through everyday bodily practices: constant tactile engagement between brain, hand, and screen. Media consumption thus becomes instant “food for thought,” offering momentary stimulation without existential depth or reflective ceremony. The ethical and ontological dimensions of human communication—how meaning, presence, and responsibility were once negotiated within shared symbolic rituals—are increasingly absent.

 

Instead, core aspects of communication are systematically manipulated through algorithmic affect, engineered to capture attention, shape emotion, and modulate desire across global media ecologies. This represents one of the most dangerous paradoxes of our digitally saturated, socially virtualised present: a world in which fantasy replaces fact, virality replaces truth, and emotional intensity outweighs epistemic validity.

 

The fantasies produced within this media society are fog-like constructions—emotionally contagious, sentimentally amplified, yet fundamentally untrue. Despite their falsity, these narratives achieve extraordinary viral power. Data, information, and affect become detached from truth and ethics, while emotional immediacy becomes the dominant currency of influence.

 

Consequently, not only digital-native youth but also older generations shaped by pre-digital media cultures are drawn into cycles of emotional addiction and cognitive destabilisation. Media communication today functions as a psychological pandemic, producing a spectacle-driven culture of consumption. As Eagleton, Deleuze, and Heidegger have argued, contemporary technological systems profoundly reconfigure human cognition, perception, and modes of being-in-the-world. Media, in this sense, anthropologically reshapes the human brain—normalising addiction, emotional excess, and self-produced instability.

 

This instability is not accidental; it is highly marketable. It is monetised and strategically mobilised by media enterprises, technology entrepreneurs, and political-economic actors seeking dominance across local, regional, and global markets. Emotional volatility, affective addiction, and cognitive dependency have become central media-market strategies. Digital platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WeChat thrive by circulating illogical, emotionally polluted, and sensational narratives. These platforms do not merely change how we consume media; they fundamentally alter how we think, feel, and theorise communication itself. As a result, a growing disjunction has emerged between contemporary media realities and the theories still taught in universities and academic institutions.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The digitally mediated communication environment of the present marks a critical rupture in the history of human interaction. What was once grounded in symbolic deliberation, ethical responsibility, and shared social meaning is now increasingly shaped by algorithmic affect, emotional engineering, and attention economies. Within contemporary media ecologies, fantasy routinely replaces fact, virality displaces truth, and emotional intensity outweighs epistemic validity. These transformations are not accidental by-products of technological progress but structurally embedded features of platform capitalism and digital political economy.

 

This article has demonstrated that contemporary media systems operate by directly intervening in human affective and cognitive processes. Through feedback loops, algorithmic visibility, and emotionally charged content, digital platforms normalise addiction, sentimental excess, and psychological volatility. Technological systems do not merely mediate reality; they reorganise modes of being-in-the-world. Media, in this sense, becomes anthropological—it reshapes the human brain, emotional economy, and social imagination.

 

The monetisation of emotional instability has emerged as a central strategy within global media industries. Illogical, sensational, and emotionally polluted narratives are not anomalies; they are highly profitable cultural products. Digital platforms thrive precisely by circulating affectively contagious content that detaches emotion from ethics and information from truth. Consequently, both digital natives and older generations are increasingly drawn into cycles of emotional dependency and cognitive destabilisation, producing a psychological pandemic of mediated consumption.

 

This growing disjunction between contemporary media realities and the theories still taught in universities signals an urgent need for epistemic renewal in media and communication studies. Classical frameworks alone are insufficient for analysing a media world driven by algorithms, affective governance, and neurocognitive capture. Media pedagogy, theory, and research must move toward interdisciplinary models integrating media ecology, cybernetics, psychology, and critical political economy.

 

Ultimately, the challenge before us is not merely to critique digital media but to reimagine communication as an ethical, cognitive, and anthropological practice. Without such reorientation, media will continue to function as machinery of emotional exploitation, producing societies rich in sensation yet impoverished in meaning, responsibility, and truth.

 

 

References

Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2017). The mediated construction of reality. Polity Press.
Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Zone Books. (Original work published 1967)
Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October, 59, 3–7.
Eagleton, T. (1990). The ideology of the aesthetic. Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1954)
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Duke University Press.
McLuhan, H. M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. University of Illinois Press.
Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or control and communication in the animal and the machine. MIT Press.