Cringe as a Form of Emotional Manipulation in Albanian Digital Campaigns (2025)

Abstract

Digital political campaigns increasingly use discomfort to hold the audience’s attention. Albania’s 2025 parliamentary elections illustrate this pattern. Cringe functions here as a form of emotional manipulation, drawing on theories of awkwardness, emotional governance, and political spectacle (Dahl, 2018; Deleuze, 1992; Debord, 1994). The Cringe Intensity Index (CII) measures this strategic awkwardness. The index was applied to campaign content from five political figures (N = 5) and 127,000 public comments collected during the official campaign period. Higher cringe intensity was associated with higher engagement (r = 0.79) and stronger electoral outcomes (ρ = 0.90). Campaign content built on false intimacy, symbolic dehumanization, exaggerated emotionality, and cultural misalignment was repeatedly amplified by platform algorithms. The method offers a replicable way to measure emotional manipulation in political communication. It also documents the growing role of emotional discomfort in platform-mediated politics.