United in Grief? Emotional Communities Around the Far-Right Terrorist Attack in Hanau

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21225810
AutoresDébora Medeiros (0000-0003-3820-7093, Freie Universität Berlin), Ana Makhashvili (0000-0001-7239-6233, Freie Universität Berlin)
Ano2022
Volume10
Fascículo3
Páginas39-49
Data de publicação2022-07-28
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMedia and Communication (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2183-2439 • E-ISSN: 2183-2439
EditoraCogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT)
DOI10.17645/mac.v10i3.5438
OpenAlexW4288080798
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas30

Drawing on theories of affect, emotion, and new institutionalism, we analyze discourse around the right-wing terrorist attack in Hanau, Germany, to identify the different ways in which emotions and affect circulate on legacy media and Twitter and how they help establish varying emotional communities. Building upon an understanding of journalism as an affective institution, our article takes a close look at how journalism attempts to assert its role in public spheres not only by circulating information but also by providing emotional interpretations of events. Journalism’s emotional interpretations, however, do not remain unchallenged. With the emergence of the hybrid media system, users engage in various forms of interaction on social media platforms, forming “affective publics” by connecting through their affective reactions to current issues and events. In these interactions, distinct emotional communities may emerge, built around performative, political emotions. Our data comprises various news shows aired on the German public service broadcaster ARD as well as a dataset of tweets about #Hanau that were collected in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The results of our mixed-methods analysis reveal that different performances of grief played a central role both on TV news and on social media. On TV, grief was nationally connotated and aimed at uniting Germany’s population. On social media, it fueled anti-racist activism, as seen on the hashtag #SayTheirNames, honoring the victims of the attack

Aesthetics · Grief · Journalism · Media studies · Performative utterance · Political science · Politics · Population · Social media · Sociology · Terrorism · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Social Psychology