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Postemotionalism, nostalgia for authentic emotional experiences, can be observed in every aspect of popular culture, particularly social media and reality television. Viewers are driven by the need to find the balance between individuality, expressed through “legitimate” emotions, insights and acceptance by their peer group on social media.

I use the program, “Catfish: The TV Show” to explore how postemotionalism operates in reality television.

This paper examines the new experience of dramatized emotions as they are portrayed in reality television and reflected on social media. I offer a theorization of social media users’ response to the search for authenticity on television through an analysis of a series of Twitter interactions surrounding “Catfish: The TV Show.”

The interactions on Twitter reveal that postemotionalism makes it difficult for viewers to distinguish between genuine, emotional interactions and projected, managed identities.

Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

Purpose – Reality TV shows that feature embodied “transformations” are popular, including Intervention, a program that depicts therapeutic recovery from addiction to “health.” The purpose of this chapter is to address the ways whiteness constitutes narratives of addiction on Intervention.

Methodology – This analysis uses a mixed methodology. I conducted a systematic analysis of nine (9) seasons of one hundred and forty-seven (147) episodes featuring one hundred and fifty-seven individual “addicts” (157) and logged details, including race and gender. For the qualitative analysis, I watched each episode more than once (some, I watched several times) and took extensive notes on each episode.

Findings – The majority of characters (87%) are white, and the audience is invited to gaze through a white lens that tells a particular kind of story about addiction. The therapeutic model valorized by Intervention rests on neoliberal regimes of self-sufficient citizenship that compel us all toward “health” and becoming “productive” citizens. Such regimes presume whiteness. Failure to comply with an intervention becomes a “tragedy” of wasted whiteness. When talk of racism erupts, producers work to re-frame it in ways that erase systemic racism.

Social implications – The whiteness embedded in Intervention serves to justify and reinforce the punitive regimes of controlling African American and Latina/o drug users through the criminal justice system while controlling white drug users through self-disciplining therapeutic regimes of rehab.

Originality – Systematic studies of media content consistently find a connection between media representations of addiction and narratives about race, yet whiteness has rarely been the critical focus of addiction.

This chapter uses the pandemic crisis to explore the social processes that structure happiness and shape fantasies of living a happy life. Considered herein are issues of human potential, gendered and classed possibility and people's differing chances in cultivating a sense of satisfaction in ‘being happy’, despite living through COVID-19. Interviews with 40 Australian women living during lockdown restrictions with varying levels of social, cultural and economic capital are utilised to make sense of women's happiness. Vastly different avenues for achieving a happiness fantasy outside of drinking alcohol were possible for more privileged women than for those in middle and working classes. The classed differences in women's gendered roles in managing emotions (their own and other people's) and their chances to be happy are exemplified in how the changes to the structure of the day that resulted from COVID-19 restrictions did not devastate or cause stress (as we heard from working-class women) or need to be filtered or blocked out using alcohol in order to retain balanced emotions (as we heard from middle-class women) but rather provided an opportunity to celebrate the achievement of their happiness fantasy. We deduce that for those with less agency available to control their chances of living a happy life, prevailing COVID-19 discourse that places happiness within individual responsibility and focuses on personal resilience rather than tending to the conditions for flourishing, is problematic.

The front page of the Toronto Sun displayed an image of Karla Homolka bruised and battered and read, ‘Bernardo Did This to Karla: Crown’. In 1993, Karla Homolka entered into a plea deal in exchange for the testimony against her then-husband Paul Bernardo. Though Homolka pled guilty to two counts of manslaughter, Canadian media outlets painted Homolka as a subservient and battered woman fearful of the abusive Bernardo's reprisal. Then, during Bernardo's trial, rumoured videotapes finally surfaced that exposed Homolka's seemingly wilful role in the gruesome murders of the young girls Kristen French, Leslie Mahaffy, and her sister Tammy Homolka. Although Tammy Homolka's death had been deemed accidental, her body was exhumed, and autopsy reports found lethal traces of sedative drugs in her system. While sedated, both Bernardo and Homolka raped her as she choked and died on her own vomit. After these videotapes surfaced, media representations shifted drastically – referring to Homolka's plea deal as ‘the deal with the devil’.

This chapter outlines the crimes committed by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka – also known as the Barbie and Ken Killers. Furthermore, it employs a qualitative literature review to document the evolution in the media representations of Homolka and exposes the media's role in the creation of this ‘monstrous’ woman in Canadian history. As this chapter outlines the representational shift of Homolka in the media, it deconstructs the hegemonic notions of proper femininity that often characterise women as deviant. Moreover, from a social constructivist lens, the brutality of Homolka's crimes are considered and examined in the context of the normative ideologies surrounding ideal womanhood and sexuality. I will argue that by dismantling these socially constructed ideologies, the significance of Homolka's whiteness also becomes apparent. As Homolka seems to deviate from her whiteness, media depictions illustrate an incitement of hysteria. Thus, this article questions the validity of the media representations that once depicted Homolka as ‘the girl next door’ – who was acting in accordance with her whiteness – but also inevitably paint her as the ‘devil’.

Purpose: We critically examine the idea of neurodiversity, or the uniqueness of all brains, as the foundation for the neurodiversity movement, which began as an autism rights movement. We explore the neurodiversity movement's potential to support cross-disability alliances that can transform cultures.

Methods/Approach: A neurodiverse team reviewed literature about the history of the neurodiversity movement and associated participatory research methodologies and drew from our experiences guiding programs led, to varying degrees, by neurodivergent people. We highlight two programs for autistic university students, one started by and for autistics and one developed in collaboration with autistic and nonautistic students. These programs are contrasted with a national self-help group started by and for stutterers that is inclusive of “neurotypicals.”

Findings: Neurodiversity-aligned practices have emerged in diverse communities. Similar benefits and challenges of alliance building within versus across neurotypes were apparent in communities that had not been in close contact. Neurodiversity provides a framework that people with diverse conditions can use to identify and work together to challenge shared forms of oppression. However, people interpret the neurodiversity movement in diverse ways. By honing in on core aspects of the neurodiversity paradigm, we can foster alliances across diverse perspectives.

Implications/ Values: Becoming aware of power imbalances and working to rectify them is essential for building effective alliances across neurotypes. Sufficient space and time are needed to create healthy alliances. Participatory approaches, and approaches solely led by neurodivergent people, can begin to address concerns about power and representation within the neurodiversity movement while shifting public understanding.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, trust considerations have been amplified to levels not seen in most of our lifetimes. We have been asked to trust: epidemiologists, virologists and immunologists in terms of the nature of COVID-19 transmission and vaccinations; politicians, public health planners and policymakers in terms of the need for various responses such as lockdowns, school closures, border closures and economic recovery plans; media sources in terms of accurately reporting COVID-19 news; and members of our community in terms of doing their best to protect themselves and others from COVID-19 transmission, including mask wearing, hand washing, isolating and social/physical distancing. Within this chapter, we attempt to explore the emotional responses to this complex web of trust considerations from qualitative data in a study we conducted amidst the beginning of the pandemic. We then offer some interpretations about how trust considerations may have been altered as a result of living in and through the pandemic. We suggest that trust can be a primary emotion, or at least function that way during times of crises, and be (reflexively) deployed by citizens to manage emotional repertoires during crisis and to position themselves as responsible neoliberal citizens. We add understanding about the strains in horizontal/interpersonal trust relations during a pandemic – where the virus spreading between people necessitates social and relational distancing measures for containment – and inflames questions about whether or not we can trust each other.

This paper explores the symbolic meanings that children of elementary school age attach to souvenirs from different types of vacation destinations. Data from interviews and pictorial projectives illustrate the meaning of souvenirs for children, including how children skillfully use souvenirs in their everyday lives and how they interpret souvenirs as symbols of people, places, and experiences. More specifically, the interview data reveal the meanings attached to souvenirs which are possessed, including how souvenirs are clearly distinguished from other objects which are possessed and how they are used for their contemplation and action value, for their communicative properties, and to provide continuity across time and place. In addition, the data from pictorial projectives reveal the latent motives of souvenir acquisition as well as how different types of places lead to different types of souvenir choices. Thus, the paper demonstrates the many layers of meaning associated with souvenirs in both acquisition and consumption processes and provides evidence that the meanings between children, places, and objects are inextricably linked.

Popular soup kitchens multiplied rapidly during 2020 in Latin America in the Covid-19 context, seeking that those who do not have guaranteed food access achieve some predictability in their daily food intake. Managing these kitchens requires specific practices, such as organising goods, resources, services and actions that make food, health and personal hygiene viable, as well as the management and emotional care associated with care. The main objective of this chapter is to analyse the emotions associated with food in soup kitchens as a care practice that is configured as an interstitial practice and an affirmation of love and hope. For this, a virtual ethnography and virtual interviews were carried out with people participating in the organisation of soup kitchens in Latin America during the second half of 2020. We will focus on two aspects of our records: the registered groups' names and ‘logos’ and the photos of six countries that appear as ‘identifiers’ of the groups reported there.

To achieve this objective, the argument is structured as follows: (1) The relationship between love, interstitial practices and food is conceptually defined, (2) the methodological strategy used and a vision about bodies/emotions are synthesised, (3) the results of the empirical information are presented and (4) some traces of the emotions surveyed and their connection with love are outlined. It ends by emphasising it is necessary to continue investigating how the set of collective practices that elaborate day-by-day love.