The Mental Life of a Telephone Pole and Other Trifles: Affective Practices in the Context of Research Funding

Abstract

This article uses ethnographic social media analysis to interpret affective practices concerning research funding. The analysis is based on Finnish Twitter discussions both within academia and between researchers and those outside academia. Different kinds of affective practices, both sharing and othering, are present in the discussions that guide the ways we make sense of the role of science in our individual lives, as well as in society more generally. We need to see these emotions at work as signals of negotiations of values in the context of neoliberal universities and freedom of science.