Affective publics and structures of storytelling: sentiment, events and mediality

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I further explicate the construct of affective publics by drawing elements from two case studies, the first focusing on uses of Twitter leading up to and following the events surrounding the resignation of Hosni Mubarak via #egypt, and the second one focusing on online iterations of the Occupy movement, and specifically #ows, one of the more connective and central tags of the movement. I explore what mediated feelings of connectedness do for politics and networked publics in the digital age, and explore their impact on structures of storytelling, sentiment, and the mediality of events broadcast through different platforms. Technologies network us, but it is our stories that connect us.

KEYWORDS:

• Big data
• social movements
• social media
• affective publics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Zizi Papacharissi is professor and head of the Communication Department at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Her work focuses on the social and political consequences of online media. Her books include A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age (Polity Press, 2010), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (Routledge, 2010), and Journalism and citizenship: New agendas (Taylor & Francis, 2009). She has also authored over 50 journal articles, book chapters or reviews, and serves on the editorial board of 11 journals, including the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, and New Media and Society. Zizi is the editor of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the new open access Sage journal Social Media and Society. Her fourth book, titled Affective publics: Sentiment, technology and politics was recently selected as the winner of the 2015 Human Communication and Technology Division, National Communication Association Outstanding Book Award. [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1 See relevant studies, conducted with various colleagues, including: Meraz and Papacharissi (2013), Papacharissi (2012), Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira (2012), Papacharissi and Blasiola (in press) and Meraz and Papacharissi (in press).

2 For #egypt, we worked with the totality of tweets broadcast in the period ranging between 23 January and 24 February 2011, and conducted a frequency analysis, using R, of a total of 1.5 million multilingual tweets. We also ran a variety of computerized content analyses (semantic, focused on addressivity markers, examining the flow of information), and drew a sample of 300,000 tweets that we conducted a subsequent discourse analysis on.

For #ows, we worked with a stratified random sample representing 10% of total activity ranging between October 2011 and July 2012. We ran frequency analyses (using SQL scripts), computerized content analysis (using SQL scripts and running semantic analyses on addressivity markers and hashtag frequency), and discourse analysis on isolated episodes of high addressivity/peaks, examining content, addressivity patterns, the focus of conversation and conversational tendencies. For further detail on our data gathering methods, please see: Papacharissi (2012, 2014), and Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira (2012).