Emotion and Digital Culture

Programme

9.01-9.05: Introduction & welcome: Helle Kannik Haastrup, Associate professor, University of Copenhagen

09.05- 10.15: Keynote and discussion: Professor P. David Marshall, Charles Sturt University, (AUS)

Our contemporary worlds and cultures have been profoundly integrated into digital dimensions over the last 30 years.  This integration is partially connected to past forms of blending of image, text and sound that have been elemental in how human culture has communicated for more than 100,000 years. The hashtag is an example of how a particular model of communication has been instrumental in the structure of social media connections, commercial and information patterning, and emotional attributions that help define how collectives are formed and reformed in digital culture.  This presentation looks at the development of hashtag within and between cultures in exploration of its formation of alliances, engagements and values across the various social media platforms.  The study identifies how the hashtag works emotionally, politically and culturally in shaping our forms of connection and communication in contemporary life. From the basis of analysis of the emotional and informational qualities of the hashtag, the presentation then moves on to a discussion of other “emblems” of emotion in digital culture: specifically, the presentation and associated discussion will move to consider emoji, memes, and facial expression recognition in and through the intercommunication industries of social media and their billions of users and subscribers on platforms such as Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, WeChat Twitter and Snapchat among many others.

10.15-10.45: Welmoed Wagenaar, PhD Candidate, University of Gronningen (NL)

Short presentation of 15 min. followed by discussion of 15 min.

In this presentation, I present preliminary findings based on ethnographic research on how fandom is lived, practiced and experienced by media fans in their everyday life. I show how for many of my interlocutors, fandom is an integral part of their daily life while also being a set apart reality they engage in. Specifically, I zoom in on how engaging in fandom throughout the day can become a way to dip into particular moods and emotions - something fans navigate carefully.

10.45-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-11.30: Mikkel Bækby Johansen, PhD Candidate, University of Copenhagen

Sense and Sensibility in Intellectual Discourse on YouTube: The case of Sam Harris and the Intellectual Dark Web

In recent years, YouTube has become a public intellectual arena in its own right. The YouTube video is one of the main vehicles for public intellectual interventions, which are circulated on YouTube by both intellectuals, intermediaries, and audiences. Focusing on the case of Sam Harris, member of The Intellectual Dark Web, a loose collection of intellectuals and YouTube stars, I present part of my PhD thesis, which illustrates how reason and emotion are often juxtaposed and used to position participants of the online culture wars. I exemplify this point by close reading Sam Harris’ public intellectual performance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher in which a much debated argument with Hollywood actor Ben Affleck came to represent the positional characteristics of contemporary public intellectual discourse.

11.30-12.00: Lene Bull Christiansen, Associate Professor, University of Roskilde (RUC)

This presentation introduces some preliminary findings from the research project Feminist Activism in Transition (FAT), in which we have investigated the affective flows, which interconnect a movement of body/fat activists in Denmark. In my presentation, I will focus on the ways in which emotion functions to bind people together through their everyday engagements with each other via social media.

Registration

Open only to registered participants, please contact h.k.haastrup@hum.ku.dk