Crying in Society and Media
This
paper deals with the topic of tears and crying. Crying for emotional reasons is a purely human
phenomenon. Therefore, it is no coincidence that man has been thinking about it for thousands of
years.
The aim of this work is to shed light on the concept of crying from a wide variety
of perspectives, focusing on crying in public and virtual spaces.
The first part of this
paper mentions some pre-modern theories that have been established about crying in order to
give some historical context. After that we will discuss the role crying plays in our society, how
people react to it and most importantly how communication through tears works. Subsequently,
gender-specific differences or prejudices are examined in more detail.
The second
part of this thesis highlights how crying is portrayed in media. First, we provide an analysis of the
"sadtok" trend on the social media platform TikTok. A survey collected data on feelings of young
men about this trend and about crying in general. Then, the focus is on the use of emotions in
advertising, specifically the use of crying.
Finally, the outcomes of this work are
summarized and a conclusion is drawn.
