Age of Outrage: Are we more outraged now than ever before?

OPINION: In the wake of the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane, outraged women took to Twitter to express their anger at yet another case of domestic violence against women in New Zealand, and to call for change. In turn, outraged men also took to social media to insist domestic violence was not a cultural norm in New Zealand, yelling "not all men" are violent.

During a Christmas parade, the Hawera Mt View Lions Club dressed up in blackface for their float, to the outrage of many who labelled the move racist. At the time, the chair of the Lions club couldn't understand the fuss.

Just recently, a woman took offence at being identified as Asian on a receipt she received from a West Auckland restaurant - many said the outrage was "PC gone mad".

Each day, across the globe, someone's outrage makes the headlines. Are we living in the Age of Outrage?

The Age of Outrage is a new series from Newshub exploring the world we're living in now. Some experts we've interviewed for the series say we're no more outraged now than we were a generation ago. What we're outraged about, and how we express our anger, has certainly changed. Others believe that, because of social media, we now have a louder, more militant voice which encourages outrage.

In the first article of the series we look at how the word "snowflake" has come to be the defining insult for a generation often perceived as having a fragile and easy existence - the millennials.

An interesting point, Dr Sharyn Graham Davies, an associate professor of social sciences says, is that those yelling "snowflake" the loudest come from a generation that lived through the Vietnam War, out of which emerged an activist, hippie culture opposed to war.

While the Baby Boomer generation now looks conservatively at millennials, this generation was once perceived as being liberal, outspoken and privileged.

The Age of Outrage series will look at who's outraged, what we're outraged about and how we can turn that outrage into constructive conversations about serious topics.

Join the conversation - #AgeofOutrageNZ.

Rhonwyn Newson is Newshub's features editor.