Mediatization of Emotion on Social Media: Forms and Norms in Digital Mourning Practices

Abstract

This article provides the theoretical background for this Special Issue which explores the mediatization of emotion on social media as attested in different digital mourning practices. The overview discusses the affective and emotional turn alongside the mediatic turn in relation to key trends and foci in the study of affect/emotion. Our discussion points to a shift in conceptualizations of affect/emotion from mediated to mediatized practice, embedded in other social practices and subject to media and social media logics, affordances, and frames, which are worthy of empirical investigation. The article also presents key insights offered in the four articles of this Special Issue and foregrounds current and future directions in the study of mediatization, emotional sharing, and digital mourning practices.

Migrancy and digital mediations of emotion

“…Other scholars (Döveling et al, 2018; Giaxoglou and Döveling, 2018) argue, in a social media-oriented conceptualization of affect, that the ‘mediatization of emotion’ through people’s online ‘doings’ produces ‘digital affect cultures’ that are specific to communities of web practices (Döveling et al, 2018: 2). The idea emphasizes how affect is produced through people’s doings of media practices, and articulates a pursuit of the ‘logics’ of social media platforms.…”

Techno-emotional mediations of transnational intimacy: social media and care relations in long-distance Romanian families

“…Debates about emotion/affect and digital media have recently burgeoned within the fields of media and internet studies (e.g. Bareither, 2017; Chambers, 2013; Döveling et al, 2018; Garde-Hansen and Gorton, 2013; Giaxoglou and Döveling, 2018; Grossberg, 2010; Hillis et al, 2015; Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012; McVeigh-Schultz and Baym, 2015). With regard to the role of social media, Papacharissi’s influential notion of ‘affective publics’ engages with the question of how affect takes particular shapes within platform spaces (Papacharissi, 2015).…”

Problematising reality: the promises and perils of synthetic media

“…According to an influential definition, mediatisation refers to the condition whence the media ‘have become an integral part of other institutions’ operations, while they also have achieved a degree of self-determination and authority that forces other institutions […] to submit to their logic’ (Hjarvard 2008 , p. 106). The matter here is, essentially, one of the media’s ever-presence, permeating ‘all aspects of private, social, political, cultural, and economic life, from the micro (individual) to the meso (organisational) to the macro (societal) level’ (Giaxoglou and Döveling 2018 , p. 2). In the same vein, the social world of today is ‘ changed in its dynamics and structure by the role that media continuously (indeed recursively) play in its construction’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017 , p. 15).…”