WHEN EMOTIONS SPIRAL: POLARIZATION AND RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION IN ONLINE TEACHER DISCUSSIONS

Fahui Fei

Abstract


The teaching profession in China is culturally paradoxical: revered as spiritual patriarchs yet burdened by unlimited responsibility and public outrage. This study investigates how online discussions of teacher misconduct can escalate into emotional outbursts. Using grounded theory, we analyzed 4,000 user comments from eight incidents on Chinese social media between 2023 and 2025. The proposed Emotional Polarization Spiral model comprises six self‑reinforcing stages: fragmented triggering, emotional arousal, algorithmic amplification, echo chamber reinforcement, group polarization, and labeling simplification. The spiral revolves around cumulative erosion of public trust in teachers; each incident depletes trust capital and intensifies the next cycle. The model extends affective polarization research to a non‑Western, morally freighted occupation, specifies recursive emotion‑algorithm‑identity mechanisms, and adapts Habermas’s refeudalization thesis to China’s administered publicness. Practical implications for platform governance, cultural cultivation, professional empowerment, and shielded mini‑publics are discussed.


Keywords


emotional polarization; teacher image; online public discussion; habermas public sphere; grounded theory

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v13i7.6837

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