Love, Affiliation, and Emotional Recognition in #kämpamalmö:— The Social Role of Emotional Language in Twitter Discourse

Abstract

While emotional language and imagery in protest esthetics are nothing new, emotions have been repressed in modern political discourse at large, as being seen as irrational if not dangerous. As new media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, are becoming central media spaces for live online broadcasting of political protests, they have become an important site of discursive struggle for researchers to take into account. This article argues that emotional language use is not merely something excessive but a central discursive resource for participants in communicating their political and social relations. The analysis in this article is based on data collected from the Twitter hashtag #kämpamalmö during an anti-fascist demonstration that took place in Malmö, Sweden in 2014. Methodologically, this article is guided by a critical discourse analytical approach, with a focus on how emotional language use allows participants to form collectivities. Empirically, the article identifies how participants make use of emotional language to negotiate and relate to and identify with objects, with the outcome of different forms of socialites. One example of this is how the city itself became a central object of negotiation, as a contested love object as well as a political “empty signifier.” Another object around which participants negotiate themselves is “love” itself, as in love for the movement and as a political object in itself.

Monumental upheavals: Unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia

“…Carlson and Frazer (2021: 60) emphasise, ‘Anger is a powerful effective force, but from it something must grow’. Shared emotions are the ‘glue’ of identity and can have the potential to bring different collectives together (Persson, 2017). However, the refusal to address the Cook statue and other colonial commemorations is considered by many to be part of the continuum of colonisation and, as such, will continue to incite a range of emotions.…”

“They Got Filters”: Indigenous Social Media, the Settler Gaze, and a Politics of Hope

“…(Blevins, 2019, p. 14) More than just the discursive content of tweets, the affective registers of hashtags used in Twitter dialogue around police brutality worked to internalize and intensify an audience that supported Black rights. Persson (2017), on the contrary, explores the "excessive" aspect of affect and emotion in online political activity. Focusing on the affective politics of Twitter use during an anti-fascist protest, they argue that in understanding online expressions, we must understand to which publics they are connected, and which they produce.…”

“…Focusing on the affective politics of Twitter use during an anti-fascist protest, they argue that in understanding online expressions, we must understand to which publics they are connected, and which they produce. Persson (2017) writes, “To feel in public is a way for people to discharge their own individual emotions in front of others, but it also becomes a way of being part of a public based partly on shared emotions” (p. 9, their emphasis). This work shows that through the circulation of affect that publics are produced , rather than just gathered or contained.…”

“…Most commonly, this work has sought to understand how affect is implicated in the production of digital “publics” (Hipfl, 2018; Papacharissi, 2016). Analyses have included how the affective force of “anger” can rally a people around issues of social justice (Blevins et al, 2019); how anti-fascist activism can be reframed and intensified through notions of “love” (Persson, 2017); and how “eudaimonic” (i.e., meaningful, joyful, and inspiring) memes can be used to “circulate joy” among Facebook publics (Rieger & Klimmt, 2019).…”

VICSOM: VIsual Clues from SOcial Media for psychological assessment

“…This pool of data, as a mirror of society on a smaller scale, can provide valuable clues about users' physical/mental health conditions, as well as personality features which have recently been used in analytical screening. Analytical screening methods have successfully identified markers in social media data, and this trend has been followed up in two directions including (i) physical ailments, and (ii) mental health issues, e.g., addiction [33], depression [7,23,38], Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) [17], suicidal ideation [8], sense of love [36], happiness [13], and enhance life satisfaction [34]. However, studies in health screening using SNS data are not mature enough and need to be developed in order to be effectively used in health care systems.…”