LGBTQI+ icons between resistance and normalization: looking for mediatization of emotions in hashtags

Abstract

The mediatization of emotions emerges as an affordance of social media, the study of which involves paying attention to digital practices and to the construction and expression of public affection. This happens both for the great events and for the daily demonstrations of support or its denial. In this article we work on the phenomenon of the mediatization of emotions linked to two LGBTQI+ icons and expressed in hashtags on Twitter. Placing it in a specific context – the one of well-known television characters who have declared their homosexual orientation or transgender identity. The objective is to understand if the cloud of feelings they have created on Twitter is to be attributed to a true globally mediatized emotional exchange, or just an expression of emotions on the social media, and discover which emotional dynamics, linked to the LGBTQI+ world, they express.