The Affective Public Sphere: Emotion as the Engine of Media Accountability in the MENA Region

 The normative ideal of the Habermasian public sphere—characterized as rational, critical, and dispassionate—has long served as the primary yardstick for evaluating media accountability. However, in the “hybrid regimes” of the Global South, particularly within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this Western-centric model fails to capture the visceral mechanisms through which citizens actually discipline power. This article challenges the universal applicability of the rationalist model by proposing the “Affective Public Sphere” as a more accurate analytical framework for understanding digital dissent. Focusing on the digital landscape of Morocco, the study argues that media accountability is not driven by formal policy deliberation but by a “Moral Economy” of deeply embedded shared values. Through a constructivist thematic analysis of approximately 1,200 unique user-generated comments across three high-profile case studies occurring between 2022 and 2025, this research identifies three distinct “Pillars of Affect” that trigger public sanction: Humanitarian Grief, National Identity, and Cultural Dignity. The findings suggest that the digital public operates through what the authors term the “Value-Trigger Hypothesis”: media accountability remains largely dormant during technical or policy errors until a perceived transgression violates a sacred communal value. At this juncture, the “digital street” erupts into a performative ritual of collective shaming. While this affective mobilization provides a vital channel for the voiceless to reclaim agency, the article concludes that it ultimately produces a majoritarian, exclusionary consensus. This creates a dangerous feedback loop that authoritarian states can easily co-opt to legitimize censorship and tighten control over the press under the pervasive guise of maintaining “public respect.”