PERCEIVED INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND THE DEPENDENCE ON AMBIENT CONTEXT ON TWITTER DURING ELECTIONS

In this paper, I explore the role of ambient context in the encoding and decoding of election tweets and the ways these tweets signal perceived affective interconnectedness between users. I particularly explore the tweets by Turkish microcelebrities that do not make sense outside of a transient context and thus rely on the ambient context provided by shared online or offline experiences. These tweets include reactions or responses to TV interviews, news reports, rallies and so on. In scholarly works, similar tweets have been mainly observed within hashtagged datasets where the hashtag provides the necessary context. Building on Abidin’s (2015) account on perceived interconnectedness as a performance of intimacy between influencers and followers, I analyse such tweets as signifiers of affective interconnectedness that reinforce a ‘feeling of community’ (Dean, 2010). Thus, I argue that during political events, for Twitter microcelebrities, affect, as in, manifestations of experienced emotions (Papacharissi, 2012), replaces other strategies of intimacy in building these bonds. Political events create an environment where intimacy is capitalized to reinforce affective experiences and is simultaneously generated through them. Understanding the subtext in these affective expressions imply a degree of togetherness between the microcelebrity and the follower, a shared, in-group experience that relies on an existing familiarity and reinforces the intimacy between them.

Music therapy interventions based on sound properties enhancing communication with infants and toddlers

Infants are curious about sounds and can perceive them as a means of communication with others. This article describes the ways sound properties were used in music therapy encounters to facilitate communication with a group of infants and toddlers. The music therapy interactions were based on Brazilian traditional songs, musical instruments and body movements. We explored loudness, timbre and pitch used to enhance non-verbal communication. Participative performance and community music therapy principles were deemed appropriate to our interactions as we observed improvement in the quality of the infants’ and toddlers’ social and affective expressions throughout the process.

The emotive component of meaning of Russian adjectives

The article presents research into the most emotive adjectives excerpted from a linguo-psychological dictionary (“Senses, Emotions and Adjectives of the Russian Language”). An attempt was made to distinguish the emotive component of their meaning by ascribing to them appropriate affective expressions from a dictionary of associations. This approach proved effective for most of the analyzed adjectives whose emotive value is implicit (connotative adjectives).

Multimodal Affective State Assessment Using fNIRS + EEG and Spontaneous Facial Expression

Human facial expressions are regarded as a vital indicator of one’s emotion and intention, and even reveal the state of health and wellbeing. Emotional states have been associated with information processing within and between subcortical and cortical areas of the brain, including the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between spontaneous human facial affective expressions and multi-modal brain activity measured via non-invasive and wearable sensors: functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG) signals. The affective states of twelve male participants detected via fNIRS, EEG, and spontaneous facial expressions were investigated in response to both image-content stimuli and video-content stimuli. We propose a method to jointly evaluate fNIRS and EEG signals for affective state detection (emotional valence as positive or negative). Experimental results reveal a strong correlation between spontaneous facial affective expressions and the perceived emotional valence. Moreover, the affective states were estimated by the fNIRS, EEG, and fNIRS + EEG brain activity measurements. We show that the proposed EEG + fNIRS hybrid method outperforms fNIRS-only and EEG-only approaches. Our findings indicate that the dynamic (video-content based) stimuli triggers a larger affective response than the static (image-content based) stimuli. These findings also suggest joint utilization of facial expression and wearable neuroimaging, fNIRS, and EEG, for improved emotional analysis and affective brain–computer interface applications.

Interjections, phonetics, and the body

Emotive interjections are normally associated with the spoken language, but in this article, I will investigate the use of two interjections, åh ‘oh’ and puha ‘whew’ in written communication on Facebook – on the two Danish Facebook groups built around the illness and death of two young children in 2015: “Fighting for Magnus (Miv)” and “Commemorative site for Lærke Rønde Timm”. Interjections are understood as affective expressions because they reflect some of the bodily reactions and participatory investment of the followers of the two groups. The main argument in the article is that the participants write interjections as a way to deal with affective extraordinary experiences. Through phonetic analysis the interjections are seen as bodily felt and triggered reaction.