In today’s algorithmically-driven ecosystems, security is no longer perceived solely as an institutional entity tasked with providing stability and protection. Instead, it has transformed into an emotional state shaped by daily interactions within digital platforms. Security is no longer simply a matter of law or policy; it is, increasingly, an affective experience that is activated through algorithmic mechanisms guiding how we perceive threats and safety in the digital realm. This shift marks a transition from a purely institutional model of security to one where emotional and cognitive frameworks play a pivotal role in how individuals engage with, and respond to, risk and safety. The notion of security has moved beyond its historical role as an objective institution or mechanism. It is now conceptualised as profoundly entwined with emotional engagement and cognitive recognition. Today, the digital environment is a site for configuring security ; not merely as information but as something we feel and are taught to recognise through interaction, feedback, and algorithmic repetition. As platforms continuously personalise content, they distribute information and construct emotional landscapes that influence how security is understood and felt.

Security is no longer guaranteed; it is felt into being.

However, how do these shifts affect our perception of risk in a world where algorithmic curation dictates the flow of information, steering our attention towards specific narratives of threat? How do digital platforms ,constantly interplay with user data and emotional cues ,shape our awareness of risks and our emotional response to those risks?

We do not merely assess danger ,we scroll until it feels real.

These questions are central to understanding the reconfiguration of security in the 21st century, where digital infrastructures play a key role in framing and filtering what constitutes a threat and how we emotionally respond to it. This chapter explores how security is no longer merely a societal construct imposed by institutional actors; it is now a deeply personal, emotional, and algorithmically engineered process. Digital platforms increasingly blur the lines between physical and emotional security, where risks are rationally assessed, felt, emotionally charged, and cognitively anchored.

In this architecture, safety is not declared. It is rehearsed, until recognition replaces doubt.

By examining how emotional triggers, affective responses, and algorithmic suggestions shape our sense of safety, we aim to uncover the complexities of security as a feeling ,one that is orchestrated through digital architectures. In an era of ambient influence, digital security is no longer defined by institutional clarity but by affective alignment. This chapter traces how users feel secure through systems that choreograph their intuition, emotional readiness, and perceptual discipline. As Grosz (2011) notes, subjectivity ; and by extension, the sense of security ,is not a static state but a becoming: a process shaped by the rhythms of sensation, perception, and environmental influence.

Security Beyond Institutions

In the digital era, the concept of security has transcended the physical boundaries of institutional control, such as the military or law enforcement. It has shifted from a state-managed framework to a more fluid, individually shaped experience. It has taken on a more nuanced and diffuse form. Security is no longer solely defined by the presence of state forces or institutional mechanisms but by the affective structures embedded in our everyday interactions with digital platforms (Massumi, 2015). As Bigo (2014) argues, contemporary security regimes operate across three interlocking domains ,military, policing, and data analytics ,where securitisation unfolds through force and anticipatory logic. In this triadic formation, database analysts have become central to predictive governance, reframing the concept of security as a distributed infrastructure of affective modulation and algorithmic pre-emption. This signals a broader ontological shift in how safety is understood-not as a guarantee but as a sensation. 

Security is no longer what is guaranteed. It is what is gently insinuated.

Platforms function as emotional infrastructures that replace institutional guarantees with what can be called affective proxies of safety: icons, interfaces, and interaction patterns that simulate the presence of protection without necessarily providing it. The personalisation of security has become central, with algorithms determining what we see and how we feel about potential risks. Through its algorithms, digital governance infrastructure creates an environment where security is increasingly perceived as a personal responsibility, shaped by emotional resonance rather than institutional intervention (Amoore, 2016; Zuboff, 2019). What was once considered external protection by institutions is now co-created through interactions with digital spaces that calibrate and modulate our understanding of safety. This co-creation, however, is rarely conscious. It emerges from a subtle orchestration of choices that feel personal but are algorithmically conditioned. In this sense, the algorithmic will operate silently beneath the user’s actions, shaping not what is chosen but how security is felt.

This shift in security is not just a theoretical change but has practical implications for individuals and societies. The state’s monopoly on violence and protection is no longer absolute; individuals become co-creators of their security through interactions with platforms, media, and algorithms (Foucault, 1977; Haraway, 2016). As Leander (2005) argues, the emergence of private military companies has challenged traditional state-centric understandings of security, reshaping the field through commercialised and networked practices that blur the boundary between public authority and private governance. This redefinition of security means that citizens are no longer passive recipients of protection but active participants in shaping what they deem secure or unsafe ; not only through emotional interfaces but also through framing what constitutes a ‘protected object’ in the first place (Aradau, 2010). Digital platforms do not only inform users of potential threats; they curate the context in which users experience and react to these threats, shaping their emotional responses to what is considered safe or dangerous (Lyon, 2018; Tufekci, 2021). In this curated environment, safety is not communicated but performed. Platforms engage in emotional framing that encourages specific affective reactions-calm, caution, vigilance-that align with broader platform logics of engagement and retention. Rather than simply alerting us to danger, they frame it emotionally, influencing our perceptions of threat.

As platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter aggregate vast amounts of data on their users, security is algorithmically constructed and adjusted to align with individual emotional states. How we feel about a threat is shaped not only by the data provided to us but by the emotional engagement with that data. This creates an environment where security is no longer a top-down directive but a dynamic and ongoing negotiation between the user and the platform (Couldry and Hepp, 2018). In this sense, security becomes a participatory practice co-constructed between the individual and the platform through continuous feedback loops, emotional calibration, and cognitive anchoring (Pasquale, 2015; Zuboff, 2019). Digital security becomes something we perform daily through scrolling, liking, and sharing, thus reinforcing the emotional architecture of our sense of safety.

Safety is not declared; it is scrolled into presence.

As Lupton (2021) argues, such performances are embedded in more-than-human assemblages where data, emotion, and embodiment coalesce into relational practices of digital selfhood. In this context, the boundaries between public and private, between the state and the individual, are increasingly blurred. The notion of security is no longer confined to the state’s role in protecting citizens; it extends to the digital spaces that users engage with daily. This blurring means that the feedback mechanisms within digital environments are continuously reshaping our understanding of safety. Security, as a digital effect, is built not through laws or enforcement but through the algorithmic shaping of emotional responses, where algorithms prime users for certain behaviours and emotional reactions that align with institutional objectives (Bucher, 2018; Eubanks, 2018).

What emerges is a system where emotional compliance replaces legal obligation. The user does not need to understand the threat-only to feel the appropriate response. In this sense, digital security becomes a ritual of affective alignment, a process through which intuitive responses are continually recalibrated. The logic behind digital security is thus more about emotional engineering, nudging users into behaving in ways that make them feel safer in ways that benefit platform objectives. This chapter explores how the digital transformation of security reshapes our understanding of protection, trust, and vulnerability. It exposes a paradigmatic reorientation where trust no longer precedes protection but is retroactively produced through emotional consistency. Digital security thus becomes a felt sequence, not a rational certainty-a sensation carefully choreographed to simulate coherence amidst uncertainty. It interrogates how algorithmic systems predict threats and actively shape security perceptions, creating a feedback loop that reinforces the user’s relationship to digital governance and emotional regulation (Binns, 2018a; Harcourt, 2015).

Historically, security was defined by institutions, enforced through physical presence and legal frameworks-think of the police, the military, and the state apparatus that provided the security structures we lived within. However, in the age of digital media, security has shifted. It is no longer merely a matter of institutional authority or physical protection. Instead, it is framed through the algorithms of our daily platforms. These platforms, from social media to e-commerce sites, have become key players in shaping our sense of security (and insecurity), influencing what we see, react to, and understand as a threat (Amoore, 2020; Zuboff, 2019). Joler and Crawford (2018) provide a compelling visualisation of such hidden infrastructures in their Anatomy of an AI System, illustrating how security, cognition, and extraction are entangled across material and affective domains. Unlike traditional forms of security that rely on institutional power, digital security operates in the background, unseen but deeply felt. Its power lies in its invisibility. It works not by confrontation but by familiarity-by reinforcing affective signals that feel “right.” Over time, users develop what can be called digital intuition, a semi-conscious mode of pattern recognition shaped by previous platform interactions and affective residues. Platforms do not just monitor-they anticipate and interpret user behaviours, predicting how we will react and shaping our responses accordingly (Gillespie, 2018). This shift means that the sense of security is no longer imposed externally but is something we participate in, shaped by the emotional contours of digital engagement. This intuition is not innate. It is learned, conditioned, and reinforced by feedback loops designed to cultivate emotional predictability. When we scroll through social media or interact with platforms, we are not just interacting with information-we are engaging with a security architecture that influences our emotional and cognitive responses to risk (Tufekci, 2021).

Where once security was a matter of apparent, external authority, today it is a function of algorithms-something deeply embedded in our everyday digital interactions. Platforms shape the information we receive and how we feel about it (Couldry and Mejias, 2019). News of global or personal risks, such as terrorism or cyber threats, is filtered, framed, and delivered to us in ways that influence our emotional states. What we experience as a threat is not just a response to objective reality but a product of algorithmic filtering, emotional priming, and personalized engagement with content (Harari, 2018). Threat becomes an aesthetic artefact-stylised, emotionally charged, and stripped of ambiguity. Through this stylization, platforms ensure affective compliance, rendering security not as a guarantee but as a feeling that must be continuously sustained. These algorithms are not neutral; they curate our experience, determining what we feel, when, and how. Through this process, they cultivate a deeply personalised sense of security tailored to individual users. Security in this digital space becomes a dynamic feedback loop. We do not just receive information; we are emotionally conditioned by it, shaping our understanding of danger, safety, and risk (Massumi, 2015).

This shift represents a departure from the traditional, institutionalised concept of security, where risk was managed by state apparatuses, towards a more individualised, affective form of security mediated through platforms. As we interact with these platforms, we become co-creators of our security, with our emotional responses constantly calibrated by the algorithms that govern our digital lives (Lyon, 2018).

Figure 18. The Interrelationship of Security, Emotional Responses, and Intuition in Digital Threat Perception

This diagram illustrates how emotional responses, digital intuition, and security perception are interrelated in online environments. The flowchart highlights how security is no longer just a state of protection but a subjective feeling influenced by emotional feedback and algorithmic reinforcement. In this framework, digital intuition plays a critical role in shaping perceptions of security, with emotional triggers guiding responses to potential threats. The diagram further explores how digital platforms calibrate and modulate these perceptions through affective design, ultimately shaping the user’s sense of safety in a highly personalized and algorithmically driven environment.

The shifting security paradigm-from a fact to a feeling-fundamentally reshapes our understanding of safety in the digital era. As digital platforms increasingly define and interpret what is deemed “secure,” emotional responses to perceived threats have become central to the user’s sense of safety. This realignment departs from traditional notions of security, where institutions once monopolized its definition. Now, algorithmic infrastructures subtly influence and shape public perceptions of security. The power to influence how individuals feel and interpret their security is at the core of digital governance. As these emotional landscapes evolve, so does the nature of personal and collective safety. Security is no longer defined merely by institutional policies or physical protection but through the personalized cues users receive from their daily engagement with digital content. In the digital regime of emotional governance, safety is not what we have but what we are taught to feel.

What we once trusted as fact is now felt as familiarity.

Emotional Triggers in Perceived Safety

In digital experience architecture, security is no longer the result of empirical verification but the outcome of affective choreography. The perception of safety arises not from institutional protection or factual threat elimination but from the carefully curated evocation of specific emotional states. Security is now felt in being-summoned by softness of tone, fluidity of interface, and rhythm of notification. Through the repetition of these affective cues, digital platforms produce what may be called emotional realism: a sense that everything is under control, even when it is not. For instance, when Apple’s Screen Time notifies the user with phrases like “You’ve done well today,” or when Instagram gently prompts “Take a break” with a calming blue overlay, these gestures do not confirm that the user is safe-they simulate the feeling of stability. The message is not about actual wellbeing, but about maintaining the cadence of calm.

This emotional realism is not accidental. It is engineered. Platforms strategically deploy affective triggers-serene colour palettes, consistent loading times, personalised greetings-not to convey actual safety but to preempt anxiety and stabilise engagement. In this logic, security becomes a product of pre-emptive affect, where the user’s emotional equilibrium is prioritised over any actual safety verification. What matters is not whether the user is safe but whether the user feels safe-and continues to act accordingly.

To illustrate this architecture of emotional signalling, Figure 19 maps the affective triggers that modulate the user’s perception of safety and threat.

Figure 19. Emotional Trigger Grid: The Affective Architecture of Safety and Risk

The emotional grammar of platforms is not decorative-it is operational. Visual rhythm, auditory tone, spatial familiarity: each component functions as a stabilising agent in the algorithmic construction of felt safety. Security is no longer inferred from content but sensed through cadence. What matters is not what is said but how it feels to engage with it. The interface becomes the message. In this sensory architecture, the affective flow must not be interrupted. Disruption-visual, temporal, or tonal-jeopardises the sense of order. Platforms, therefore, invest in emotional preemption: a system of pre-sensed comfort that ensures users remain within a zone of engagement uninterrupted by friction or doubt. Safety, in this model, is not about certainty. It is about emotional continuity. Users are not protected; they are synchronised. This synchronisation, however, is not passive. It is continuously managed, calibrated, and fine-tuned by platforms that learn what users fear, when they fear it, and what will make them stop.

At the core of this affective economy lies what might be termed predictive serenity (algorithmically induced calmness to sustain engagement): a condition of emotional equilibrium generated through repeated exposure to ordered, familiar, and rhythmically stable digital cues. Predictive serenity is not merely the absence of disruption-it is the presence of anticipatory calmness, engineered to preserve user engagement by displacing uncertainty. Platforms cultivate this state through seamless transitions, harmonious aesthetics, and micro temporal rhythms that render the environment trustworthy without requiring verification. In such a context, serenity is no longer spontaneous but algorithmically sustained.

While predictive serenity lulls users into a sense of stability, its absence produces the inverse: affective disturbance. Emotional dissonance-caused by delays, layout disruptions, content misalignment, or tonal incongruity-triggers perceived unsafety. These disruptions need not signal actual danger. Rather, they destabilise the user’s emotional rhythm, initiating a micro-alertness that is less cognitive than visceral. What emerges is a regime of precaution without knowledge (Aradau and Van Munster, 2007), where the experience of threat is uncoupled from any empirical referent. Safety becomes a fragile rhythm maintained by emotional regularity, and its rupture-no matter how subtle-is experienced as insecurity. As Massumi (2015) argues, the affective fact precedes the actual; the sensation of disruption becomes the threat itself. In this logic, Fear no longer follows facts ; it follows friction. Emotional discomfort becomes the new signal for risk, producing a culture where users interpret instability as potential danger, regardless of context or content (Martin, 2019; Kaufmann, 2018).

In this emotional economy of digital safety, the trigger is not just an external signal but a disruption of affective continuity. The user is conditioned to equate stability with safety and unpredictability with threat, regardless of actual risk. This inversion of logic-where feeling precedes fact-reconfigures security as an affective habit, not a rational judgment. The interface does not inform the user of what is dangerous; it instructs the user on how to feel. In this way, the safety experience is ritualised into a pattern of emotional reassurance, paving the way for a new intimacy between algorithmic rhythm, intuitive response, and the ritual management of risk.

Risk, Ritual, and Digital Intuition

Risk in digital environments no longer arrives as a clearly defined threat-it is anticipated, enacted, and ritualised. Instead of official alerts, users rely on felt cues: subtle hesitations, interface inconsistencies, and momentary delays. These are not errors; they are signs. What emerges is a choreography of micro-practices-scrolling past, pausing briefly, hovering without clicking-that construct what can be called digital intuition (affectively trained anticipatory response pattern) (Amoore and Piotukh, 2015). This intuition is not grounded in knowledge, but in patterned affect: it is an embodied anticipation of risk, forged through repetition rather than recognition.

Such behaviours resemble ritual acts. They do not guarantee safety, but they perform it. Each small gesture is a symbolic checkpoint in a system where actual risk remains opaque. This echoes Ewald’s (1991) framing of insurance not merely as protection from risk but as a technique of governance that distributes responsibility and calibrates behavioural compliance through probabilistic reasoning. As De Goede (2020) suggests, security today is a “chain of moments,” in which each interaction prolongs the suspension of certainty. Intuition becomes a survival tool in this chain-not because it reveals the real but because it creates continuity without clarity. Risk becomes ambient, diffused across time, interfaces, and user reflexes (Beck, 2009; Zebrowski, 2020). The result is not the elimination of threat, but the emergence of what Salter (2008) calls managed fear-a form of self-regulation grounded in the performance of caution.

Table 2. Affective Continuum of Predictability and Disruption in Algorithmic Environments

Table 2 maps how risk in digital environments is perceived through ritualised behaviours and affective cues. The matrix is organized along two axes: one spanning from precautionary practices to explicit alerts and the other from ritualised to felt responses. Anticipated risk emerges not from facts but from repetition. Managed fear is not a breakdown of safety but its ritualised maintenance.

Table 3. Four affective states in digital interface interaction

These four states from Table 3 represent ritualised affective positions that shape how users perceive risk and coherence in digital environments. These affective states do not arise from factual risk but from the body’s learned relationship with digital rhythm. What users call intuition is, in fact, a product of design ,a synchronisation between interface logic and affective habit. Risk becomes not a signal of external threat but a reaction to disrupted flow. In this context, security is no longer cognitive but somatic: it is not something users know, but something they feel through repetition. Through ritualised affect, digital environments train the user not to detect danger but to anticipate its aesthetic disruption. Predictability becomes a proxy for safety, while irregularity becomes a proxy for threat. For instance, when a news app’s refresh cycle lags or presents unfamiliar typography, users may feel inexplicably uneasy, even if the content remains neutral. The platform does not alert the user ; it conditions them. Furthermore, in doing so, it rewrites the nature of digital attention: the user becomes both subject and sensor, actively performing micro-routines that maintain emotional coherence in environments governed by opacity.

A clear illustration of this ritualised effect can be observed in everyday navigation through Google Maps. When following a route, users rarely question the system’s instructions-not because they have verified the path but because the smoothness of the visual flow, the predictive recalibration, and the absence of warning tones create an affective frame of trust. A sudden delay in recalculating, a voice command out of rhythm, or a visual glitch in the map layer immediately generates unease-even if the user is not lost. What is disrupted is not the destination but the emotional contour of direction. This interaction is not about knowing where one is but about feeling the system knows. In such contexts, safety is performed through trust in the interface’s rhythm, not content. The micro-rituals-glancing, zooming, waiting for voice confirmation-are embodied submission to a system that rarely explains itself. This is digital intuition in action: users do not think their way through risk; they move through a choreography of confidence, provided the rhythm is intact.

What emerges from this ritualised regime is a form of felt epistemology-a system in which knowledge is displaced by emotional resonance. Users no longer seek truth; they seek fluency. Safety becomes a matter of seamlessness. The smoother the digital experience, the stronger the illusion of control. In this epistemic framework, doubt is not eliminated but bypassed. Users do not ask if something is safe-they move as if it is. This transition marks the transformation of intuition from an inner faculty into an externalised sensorium managed by design (Nissenbaum, 2010). It is not the user who learns to predict risk but the platform that trains the user to feel pre-emptively. Risk perception is no longer reactive but ritualised through rhythm, aesthetic stability, and emotional coding. Ultimately, digital intuition becomes a strategy of obedient perception. The user aligns not with truth but with affective guidance. Every pause, skip, or hover becomes a performance of discipline. Through this, platforms establish what we see and how we feel about what we do not see. The architecture of safety is no longer built on evidence but on the affective choreography of anticipation.

In this sense, the choreography of digital intuition is part of an anticipatory regime: the user is no longer reacting to the world but rehearsing reactions that feel correct. Anticipation replaces evidence, and the interface becomes an oracle of affective rhythm. Risk is no longer a threat to avoid but a sensation to pre-feel.

Obedient Perception as Algorithmic Product

In this emotional architecture’s final phase, perception becomes the product of platform governance. What users feel, expect, and avoid is no longer a matter of personal cognition but the outcome of algorithmically shaped anticipation. Obedient perception refers to this emergent condition in which users internalise platform rhythms so profoundly that their emotional and cognitive responses align with the system’s operational logic. It is not that users are forced to comply-it is that they no longer recognise anything outside the frame of what the system presents. In this regime, emotional conformity replaces critical reflection. Users become perceptually aligned not with reality but with what feels appropriately curated. Safety is not verified; it is enacted.

Table 4. Mechanisms of Obedient Perception in Algorithmic Systems

Table 4 maps key mechanisms through which platforms cultivate obedient perception. By preemptively shaping emotional and cognitive responses, platforms foster an environment where users no longer distinguish between feeling safe and being guided into safety. Perception is engineered not to question but to resonate. What is seen is no longer what is selected but what is permitted to feel familiar. Obedience becomes indistinguishable from alignment. In this system, obedience is not demanded-it is anticipated through aesthetic coherence and emotional containment.

What emerges from these mechanisms is not the enforcement of obedience but its emotional suggestion. Predictive obedience refers to the user’s tendency to act following platform expectations before explicit instruction is even given. This is not compliance by command, but by design-users feel what is allowed, intuit what should be avoided, and modulate their behaviour accordingly. Design does not instruct-it conditions. Consider Netflix’s autoplay countdown, which eliminates the decision to continue by smoothing the transition-obedience appears as flow, not choice.

Through repetition, emotional calibration becomes indistinguishable from voluntary action. Emotional tension becomes a sign to pause; fluidity becomes permission to proceed. In this regime, disruption is not punished-it is prevented. The user is not aware of alternative paths; they are emotionally steered away. Affective cues take precedence over epistemic cues. The experience is not one of being informed but of being confirmed. Thus, the platform becomes a soft governor, relying not on rules but rhythms. Persuasion becomes architecture: the user is structured to perceive, not to believe. As Lyon (2007) observed, “the watched are watching themselves.” Nevertheless, the sense becomes the structure in this case: internalised emotional cues produce externally desirable behaviours. By filtering perception through a logic of anticipatory alignment, platforms blur the boundary between thought and feeling. What once required explanation now requires only atmosphere. In such contexts, truth becomes irrelevant-what matters is emotional accuracy. Emotional accuracy refers not to a factual alignment, but to feeling the ‘right’ emotion that validates platform logic, regardless of underlying reality.

As Striphas (2015) argues, algorithmic culture does not demand awareness-it renders awareness obsolete by structuring participation as inevitability. In line with this, Stark and Hoffmann (2019) observe that dominant metaphors in data culture shape not only perception but professional ethics, consolidating affective legibility as a mode of governance. The platform does not aim for epistemic authority but affective congruence. Feeling the ‘right’ emotion at the ‘right’ moment becomes the new evidence.  The user becomes the interface: responsive, predictable, and harmonised. In the end, obedient perception is not imposed but rehearsed. It is the outcome of a system that replaces judgment with rhythm and replaces freedom with fluency. Protevi (2009) argues that political affect operates through discourse and embodied synchronisation, where cognition becomes a somatic alignment with systemic tempo.