Shaping feelings in cyberspace: The case of Chinese seafarer-partners

Research has shown that expressing feelings online is subject to feeling rules much like those that govern offline environments. ‘Expressing feelings’, however, is different from ‘feeling feelings’. Does emotional interaction online change how individuals feel and, if so, in what ways? This paper addresses the question by examining a group of Chinese seafarer-partners' activities in an online group. Drawing upon emotion management theory, this paper shows that seafarer-partners in the group helped each other to reframe negative experiences in positive ways in order to suppress unpleasant feelings. It also reveals a corollary process of online emotion-shaping, namely, boosting positive feelings, by drawing upon the concept of collective effervescence. Both processes served to make seafarer-partners feel positive about their relationships. This paper thus extends previous research findings by demonstrating that online support also serves to shape how individuals feel and does so through two processes.