Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: According to Durkheim, when people are faced with a significant emotional event, they feel a fundamental anthropological need to communicate and experience their emotions collectively, and to refer to a supra-ordinate collective consciousness. We show that when an extraordinary social and media event takes place, the social media take on the role of a “virtual collective consciousness” by regulating strong collective emotions. This appears be directly involved in the co-construction of new socially shared meaning. Based on an unusually striking socio-emotional phenomenon (the death of Michael Jackson), we describe five processes involved in regulating negative collective emotions. The regulating process appears to differ according to people’s identities, and to be directly involved in the co-construction of a new meaning shared by all. It also seems to take effect more rapidly when group identities are involved. When identity is more individual, on the other hand, the social media appear to promote more negative emotional ruminations.
Source: Hermès
Author: Brigitte Chapelain
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1829319978
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