Nils Gustafsson
elite networks, political communication & social media
Towards a Facebookization of civil society? : Exploring the institutionalization of positive emotional vocabulary
Författare
Summary, in English
Emotional vocabulary and symbols on social media abound, not only in private communication, but also in organizations and workplace organizing. In this paper, we argue that emotional labor driven by technical developments is an important but hitherto rather overlooked dark side of digitalization. We thereby take a critical perspective on the techno-utopian literature of social media organizing, by developing the concept of digital emotional labor. Focusing on civil society organizations, we approach the study of digital emotional labor on social media in two ways. Quantitatively, we explore the display of emotions on social media on an organizational level by the means of sentiment analysis. Qualitatively, we use focus group interviews to explore how individuals experience digital emotional labor. Based on this mixed-methods analysis, our find-ings point to an inflation in the usage of positive emotional vocabulary, creating an organizational emotional dissonance in contemporary civil society organizations. Stemming from the commer-cial impetus of social media platforms, it is proposed that digital emotional labor entail isomor-phic pressures on an organizational field level, rather than limiting emotional labor to specific service offerings.
Avdelning/ar
- Institutionen för strategisk kommunikation
Publiceringsår
2019-07-05
Språk
Engelska
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Konferensbidrag
Ämne
- Communication Studies
- Business Administration
Nyckelord
- social media
- emotional labor
- sentiment analysis
Conference name
EGOS 2019
Conference date
2019-07-03 - 2019-07-06
Conference place
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Status
Unpublished