"Affective Publics"
Performing Trust on Danish Twitter during the COVID-19 Lockdown
Assistant Professor Samantha Dawn Breslin and Professor Morten Axel Pedersen contributed to the journal Current Anthropology published by University of Chicago Press, with the article: ’“Affective Publics” Performing Trust on Danish Twitter during the COVID-19 Lockdown’. The article is co-authored by Anders Blok, Thyge Ryom Enggaard and Tobias Gårdhus.
In Denmark, as with elsewhere in the world, Twitter has emerged as an important arena of public discussion on issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the handling of the crisis by state authorities and health institutions.
On the basis of approximately 140,000 tweets from the period between February 24 and April 28, 2020, harvested from Danish Twitter, this report explores how tweeting about mis/trust on this digital platform can be understood as a kind of biopolitical nationalism. Combining computational and qualitative methods, the authors identify shifting performances of mis/trust and other affects on Danish Twitter and suggest that this “affective public” plays a key role in the public response to the coronavirus crisis.
Citation
Samantha Breslin, Anders Blok, Thyge Ryom Enggaard, Tobias Gårdhus, and Morten Axel Pedersen (2022) '“Affective Publics”Performing Trust on Danish Twitter during the COVID-19 Lockdown'. Current Anthropology. 11 April 2022; 63 (2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/719645
Available online
The article is available at The University of Chicago Press Journals.
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Cover of Current Anthropology, Vol. 63, no. 2