Introduction

Abstract

This introduction to the Special Issue on Networked Emotion and Stancetaking summarizes the individual and collective contribution of the included five research articles. We argue for the relevance of discourse-pragmatic theories, methods, and concepts for furnishing cross-disciplinary perspectives into the study of emotion online. Such perspectives are arguably needed in order to clarify the intricate connections between (re)presentations of emotion online and changing practices of news-making and news consumption, story sharing and participation, and public stancetaking in social media and beyond. We propose that empirical analyses of networked practices of stancetaking – epistemic, affective, or narrative – can pinpoint the construction and dissemination of different types of participant positions and stances, including multimodal ones, as well as the creation and uptake of specific frames for interpreting events and crises affectively.