An Exploration of the Transformative Potential of Melodrama in Policy Controversies: Politicians and the Gas-Quakes in the Netherlands

Recent research on environmental controversies challenges us to rethink classical distinctions between angry citizens and rational politicians. Empirical studies point out that politicians also discursively express emotions, and that citizens use rational arguments. Such insights encouraged us to study how ‘ melodrama’ as a genre next to comedy and drama plays a role in emotional governance of policy controversies: in what ways governing actors discursively ‘manage’ emotions through their narratives in newspapers and on websites. Based on a thematic analysis of 1,852 newspaper articles in the case of the gas-quakes controversy in the Netherlands – where gas production induced earth quakes – we empirically show that politicians articulate their own emotions and those expressed by the public. By doing so, national politicians attempt to discursively transform emotions of the Groningen public by (1) arguing for rational action despite the expressed emotions, and by (2) describing empathy for negative emotions and suggesting alternative emotions. Second, local and regional politicians in the way they talk about emotions translate the expressed feelings of the Groningen population into language directed towards national politicians, thus putting pressure on contested decision-making and striving for policy change. As such, politicians in their communication ‘represent’ these emotions – and make them part of the decision making and policy making processes. We will end the paper with a reflection on what these insights contribute to theories on emotional governance.