The collective sharing of emotions in a media process of communication – a pragmatist approach

Abstract

The article takes theoretical inspiration from Peirce’s views on emotion categorization and proposes to apply these ideas to the analysis of an historical episode. The latter is the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and more specifically the emotions that Egyptians expressed in Tahrir Square following Mubarak’s resignation. The article compares the dynamics of these emotional expressions as narrated by the media, on the one hand, and as they can be reconstructed from the direct witnessing of raw video materials, on the other.