Emotional straying: Flux and management of women’s emotions in social media

by Pengpeng Li, Qianru Zhuo

In recent years, social media, which has emerged with the core focus on interaction within "acquaintance networks," has gradually been infiltrated by "strangers," leading to the disorientation of many users, especially women, amidst the diverse and intricate social platforms and emotional landscapes. Grounded in the experiential perspective of social media users, this study explores the correlations among woman emotions, satisfaction, and behavior, starting from the standpoint of the impact of social media. Through in-depth interviews with woman cohorts in China, various dimensions such as emotional fluctuations, satisfaction levels, and behaviors in social media were examined. The findings reveal that emotional expression serves as a primary motivation and purpose for users to sustain their engagement with social media. Additionally, emotional masking represents a proactive operational behavior induced by the needs for social relationship maintenance and the accumulation of social capital. Furthermore, emotional management manifests as user-initiated abandonment or shift of social media activities in response to perceived emotional stress. On this basis, a conceptual model integrating woman emotions, satisfaction, and behavior in the context of social media was constructed. The outcomes of this research hold significant theoretical and practical implications for future studies on woman emotions and behaviors, as well as for the development of social media functionalities, content management, public media usage, and psychological health interventions.