Dr. Débora Medeiros and Ana Makhashvili contribute to the recent special issue of “Media and Communication” with the Article “United in Grief? Emotional Communities Around the Far-Right Terrorist Attack in Hanau“. The special issue entitled “Journalism, Activism, and Social Media: Exploring the Shifts in Journalistic Roles, Performance, and Interconnectedness” asks how journalism responds to political pressure and emerging forms of collective activism.

With their case study on the TV and Twitter-discourse around the far-right terror attack in Hanau, Germany, the authors analyze the formation of different emotional communities. Based on an understanding of journalism as an affective institution, the authors examine how journalism attempts to assert its role in the public sphere not only through the dissemination of information but also through emotional interpretations of events. On Twitter, they further examine how performances of grief relate to forms of activism. In the article, they show how different representations of grief played a central role in both TV news and on social media.

The article is published in English and open access and is available online.