Emotions and Collective Action: Diffusion in Social Networks and Biographical Outcomes

Scholarly interest in the link between emotions and collective action has been increasing in the last two decades. Once considered irrational and irrelevant, emotions have been acknowledged as significant components of collective action by social movement scholars recently. Several studies argue that emotions have important roles in processes such as collective action participation, collective identity formation and demobilization. Still, the consequences of the collective emotional experiences in the aftermath of protests have yet to be developed. Aiming at contributing to this debate, we analyze the case of the 2013 Gezi Park Protests in Turkey and investigate the biographical consequences of collectively experienced emotions during this event. Using methodological triangulation, we first examine the diffusion of emotions in online social networks during protest events using Twitter data. Next, we delve into the consequences of the emotional experiences of the activists using semi-structured in-depth interviews. The preliminary findings demonstrate that the intense feeling of shared emotional synchronization among participants, which is known as collective effervescence, has significant short- and long-term results. Our analysis indicates that the collective effervescence was associated with the increased spread of messages on social media platforms during the protests. Besides, as a unique eventful protest with the characteristics of a critical juncture for Turkish politics, the shared emotional experience and collective synchronization during the Gezi Park Protests had significant biographical consequences for the participants particularly regarding their perception of the participant social groups and their political activities in the aftermath of the protests. Consequently, analyzing the emotional components of collective action, we intend to contribute to the social movement studies by introducing a mechanism for the biographical consequences of (eventful) protests.