Emotional labour in comforting strangers on social media

Abstract

Emotional support on social media has become a popular way for people to seek comfort when facing failures and frustrations. This paper investigates the social practice of comforting strangers on the Chinese social media platform Douban. The emotional labour framework was adopted to examine the ways in which the comforting practice managed the emotions of both the comfortee and the comforter. A dataset of 400 replies was collected from Douban to analyse the use of comforting strategies and whether the conversation topic influenced their use. The study showed that comforters employed various strategies to manage distressed others’ emotions and their own emotions. The results showed a dichotomy between explicit and implicit comfort in managing comfortee emotions. Three types of replies for managing the comforter's emotions were observed, namely, a concealed reply, a projective reply, and a comparative reply. The study also revealed a correlation between conversation topics and the use of these replies.