(2017-2018)

with Barbara Frischling

“How are you feeling today?”

This project focuses on the contextualization of different forms of emotional expressions in online contexts with a cultural analytical approach. Exemplified by “YOLO” and the practices surrounding emojis we seek to deconstruct the role of emotional expressions in the making of a subject. Emotional expression in online contexts can be read as both, the satisfaction of personal needs as well as the fulfillment of neoliberal imaginations of productivity.
Emojis allow for a „quick and dirty“, but also efficient, visual articulation of emotional states. As immediate expressions, emoji-practices also refer to the dynamics and immediacy of online digitally mediated communication. As visual representations of emotional expressions, which usually become visible through bodily expressions in situative contexts, emojis add an emotional layer to the digital communications repertoire: Engaging with online-content, they allow to show anger, love, sadness and happiness etc.
Looking at the users‘ perspectives, an actor-centered approach allows to emphasize the role of these micro-practices in the broader context of emotional politics. Forms of immediate expression of emotion do not only point to the needs and constraints of neoliberal subject-making, but can further be seen as crucial in online-negotiations of politics, worldviews, beliefs and therefore offer a critical moment of solidarisation and desolidarisation.

Publications

2018 I care – I love it. Lustvolle Emojipraktiken als Teil neoliberaler Subjektwerdung, with Barbara Frischling. In: Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur 1/2018, pp. 12-17. Online: https://www.kuckucknotizen.at/kuckuck/index.php/1-18-lust/169-1-18-lust-leseprobe

Talks

2019 Doing Emoji: Performing the Emotional Self Online. with Barbara Frischling. Conference: Societé Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF) 2019, 14.-17-04.2019, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

2018 »doing emoji« Emotions-Praktiken im (digitalen) Alltag“. with Barbara Frischling. Conference: Embedded Digitalities, Arbeitstagung der Kommission für digitalen Alltag der dgv, 5-7.04.2018, University of Basel, Switzerland.

2017 YOLO. Emojis and the Economisation of Emotions, with Barbara Frischling. Conference:  European Sociological Association (ESA), 29.8. – 1.9.2017, Athens, Greece.