Public Emotions and the Affective Forces of Social Activism, Vol. 32 - 2025, No. 2

Role of Emotions in Protest Participants’ Perception of Radical Performances: The Case of Gezi Protests in Turkey

Alper Çakır, pages: 226-242

Mass protests bring together protesters from different political, social, and cultural backgrounds who have different ideas on the right way to behave and make claims during a protest, which manifests itself in their perception and judgment of the actions, discourses, and identities of others in the mobilisation. This paper intends to study the emotional processes behind the perception of radical performances in contention by analysing data gathered from 17 in-depth interviews with the participants of the Gezi protests in Turkey in 2013. Its findings indicate that emotional considerations hold a central place in the process of perceiving the actions, discourses, and identities of others, as well as in defining what is radical. According to data, three categories of emotional consideration have visible interaction patterns with the perception of radical performances: the participants’ emotions towards the protests, their emotions towards the actors involved, and their emotions towards the act in question. Such patterns directly affect the chances of a participant embracing or rejecting a particular performance labelled as radical, whether it be an act of violence, a potentially provocative slogan, or the identity of a marginal group expressed in a moment of mass contention.

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