Van Dijk and Ouwerkerk (2014) defines Schadenfreude as follows: “ we do restrict the term “schadenfreude” to the pleasure at misfortunes of others that are not directly caused by the schadenfroh person (otherwise we would consider this more akin to sadism) and are not the result of actively defeating others through direct competition (otherwise we would consider this more akin to victorious joy or gloating).” This definition stresses how Schadenfreude can be considered a kind of joy but an atypical kind of it. Related WorksĪlthough the literature on Schadenfreude is not very rich, some studies have provided definitions and typologies of it, also investigating its expression and its neurophysiological mechanisms. To test the adequacy of the proposed model and the diffusion of this emotion, we exploit social media as a repository of cases of Schadenfreude, investigating how it is expressed on these platforms. The objective of this study is to propose a model and a typology of cases of Schadenfreude so as to highlight its different facets allowing more precise studies on its sub-types. Though no clear-cut translation perfectly renders the German meaning, a close phrasing in English can be “malicious joy.” Notwithstanding the subtleties of its naming and definition, Schadenfreude is quite a frequent emotion nowadays, being linked to very important aspects of our life, such as justice and social image. Schadenfreude is a German term composed of Schaden, that means “harm,” and Freude, that means “joy,” so the word Schadenfreude refers to the pleasure at another’s misfortune. This work focuses on the emotion of Schadenfreude, and exploits the richness of the social media as a repository of cases in which people experience and express this feeling ( Ellison et al., 2007 Pang and Lee, 2008 Go et al., 2009 Burke et al., 2010 Bollen et al., 2011 Ceron et al., 2014 Marmo, 2016 Pozzi et al., 2016). Thus the social media become an inexhaustible mine of data to obtain information also on emotions that, despite their being quite frequent in everyday life, and often clearly displayed in the media, are not so investigated as primary emotions or other types of them. This means that not only information and opinions, but also emotions are spread all over the world net. The social media have projected us into an age in which people are encouraged to express whatever they know, think, and feel. Finally, a lexicometric automatic analysis is conducted on the general corpus of Italian comments collected using several hashtags and enriched by comments about the fire of Notre Dame, showing how even complex emotions like Schadenfreude can be automatically extracted from social media. From the analysis, it emerges that spatial or factual closeness does not look necessary to feel Schadenfreude. Then a specific corpus of comments is collected and analyzed concerning a specific case of Injustice Schadenfreude, the posts concerning Brexit, United Kingdom leaving the European Union. The typology is first tested on a corpus of 472 comments drawn from three social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Four types are singled out: Compensation, Identification, Aversion, and Injustice Schadenfreude. The paper presents a model of Schadenfreude, pleasure at another’s misfortune, resulting in a typology of cases of this emotion. 2Education, Psychology and Communication Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy. 1Cosmic Lab, Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy.Christian Cecconi 1*, Isabella Poggi 1 and Francesca D’Errico 2
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |