"Virtual Backyard Garden":The Construction Of Emotional Space In Social Media

Under the complicated life pressure during the social transition period,People's emotions are often frustrated and difficult to overcome by themselves,and they need to rely on a certain social space for proper placement and proper navigation.Emotional space refers to the social practical space dedicated to people's expressing,placing and communicating emotions,which is currently turning towards the virtual kind of space created by social media.Under the evolution trend of “online”,it has gradually become a “virtual back garden” for people's escaping and accommodating in emotional life.Weibo “Tree Hole” is a practical product and typical representative of this virtual turning process.Taking Weibo “Tree Hole” as an example,adopting the research methods of participatory observation,text analysis and case analysis,this article attempts to explore and expound the dynamic construction processes of emotional spaces in social media.As a place for daily emotions' communicating and healing,Weibo “Tree Hole”allows participants to obtain emotional supports from unfamiliar networks in the broadcasting-style disclosure of themselves,so as to rely on others' “baptizing” to return back the state of soul's inhabitation and mind's stability.It is a cutting-edge form in the media's practice of “Tree Hole”.There are three concrete types of its use:public-sharing,agent-publishing,open-square-posting,and two characteristics filled with inner tension: the integration of privateness and publicity,as well as the coexistence of anonymity and non-anonymity.The diverse types of its symbolic representation and inter-restricted characteristics of its inherent tension imply multiple dimensions and potential challenges of the emotional space's construction in Weibo“Tree Hole”.The implicit tradition of spatial construction emphasizes the effective realization of spatial value and the orderly exertion of spatial function.The construction of the emotional space in Weibo“Tree Hole” has undergone four steps: situational endowment,boundary's activation,interactive rituals and the reproduction of mainstream media.Specifically,situational endowment is to catalyze the fermentation of emotional climate by spreading the hidden world of symbols,cultivating perceptual community language,and attracting mysterious strangers;Boundary's activation represents the topical connection process of private emotions to reach collective emotions,which is mainly contained in the individual emotional expressions of affection between lovers,kinship,friendship,and self-feelings;The arrival of the interactive rituals is a sign of the initial generation of the emotional space of Weibo“Tree Hole”.It is the spatial practice process of participants' launching altruistic emotional assistance,engaging in multi-agent's emotional dialogue,and recognizing the emotional resonance in deeper associations,which respectively constitutes the emotional connection of empathy,sharing,and identification among participants.The presence of mainstream media on Weibo also gives it the possibility to reproduce the emotional space of Weibo “Tree Hole”.Its reproduction is achieved through the absorption of the function and the cultivation of the symbol of “Tree Hole”.The above-mentioned dynamic processes jointly construct the valuable texture and positive form of the emotional space in Weibo “Tree Hole”.However,under the operating logic of the flowing space on social media,Weibo“Tree Hole” is easily contaminated with secondary cultural symptoms,which means that the construction of its emotional space is also facing a difficult situation.This article mainly reveals the construction dilemma of the emotional space in Weibo“Tree Hole” from three levels: micro-power,commercial incorporation and media ecology.Both the emotion-tellers and other participants interacting with them have self-granting tendencies of micro-power.The former adopts the strategies of self-beautifying and at the same time vilifying others who are not present through the emotional text.The commercial capital's invasion of Weibo “Tree Hole” on the one hand brought fictional literary products that peddle emotions,and on the other hand,through these products,the participants of Weibo “Tree Hole” were trapped in the comfortable illusion of voluntary emotional labor,thereby ensuring stable operation of flow's working regulation.The media ecological crisis of the Weibo “Tree Hole”mainly includes the flood of body narratives,the squeezing and replacement of emotions by the uplift of moods,and the emotional conflicts that occur between different cultural rings.In response to the dilemmas mentioned above,this article finally provides a way of rectifying and transcending the emotional space's construction of Weibo “Tree Hole”.Rectifying is a kind of thinking about self-discipline and heteronomy,which aims to promote the autonomy and self-consistency of the actors,reduce the occurrence of secondary culture in Weibo “Tree Hole” to avoid the former's erosion to the latter's emotional space,and emphasize the maintenance of “co-creation space”;while transcending points to a way out of emotional governance,aiming to enhance the function and value of Weibo “Tree Hole”,given its exclusive role of “emotional media”,make it an approach to serve the modernization of China's system and capacity for governance.With the support of the government and technologies,as well as the broad participation of users,we will devote ourselves to the construction of “co-governance space” in Weibo “Tree Hole”.