Shame and pride in online interactions: Following digital traces of elusive social emotions

No registration needed for this seminar.

Abstract by Maja Sawicka

I would like to identify and address some challenges associated with studying emotions in digital interactions. My particular focus will be on shame: a crucial yet elusive social emotion, and its interactional counterpart, pride. According to Scheff (1988), these two emotions underpin community consensus and patterned behavior, and thus, they should be seen as “master” social emotions linking individuals to the collective. Yet, they are simultaneously ubiquitous and evasive, eluding traditional methods of social research.

In this talk, I will reflect on ways in which shame and pride can be identified and addressed in empirical research on digital interactions. Based on excerpts from my own empirical studies, I will present two analytical frameworks: an ethnomethodologically oriented framework, drawing from the concept of “methods” and applying it to emotional sanctioning in digital settings (Sawicka, Bancroft, Ranafell, 2023), and an ethnographically oriented one, drawing from the concept of emotions as practices, and applying it to how shame and pride are being “done” in digital interactions (Sawicka, 2025).

I conclude by arguing that sociological research on emotions in digital interactions should focus on tangible actions undertaken by engaged individuals in inhabited digital spaces and thus reveal the interactional, expressive, and space-bound underpinnings of digital life-worlds.

Biography

Dr. Maja Sawicka is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Digital Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Warsaw (Poland). She is interested in the sociology of emotions and social interactions. In her research she currently focuses on digital interactions and investigates emotional mechanisms underpinning the emergence of local digital subcultures of emotions. She specializes in qualitative research methods with a focus on digital ethnography. She is an active member of the European Sociological Association, Research Network 11 (Sociology of Emotions), and a regular member of the Digital Anthropology Lab at the University in Tübingen (Germany). She has authored and co-authored articles published in journals such as Symbolic Interaction, Cultural Sociology, Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, and others.

Organiser

Lisa Flower, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology | Coordinator for Qualitative Methods Lab

Welcome October 20^th!

Arranged by: Lund Social Science Methods Centre