(In)visible bonds: Towards a dynamic conceptualisation of emotion in journalist- politician relationships

Journalists and politicians are professionally interdependent and closely entangled. Their interactions form fluid communities with shifting boundaries and implicit rules that are strongly shaped by emotion. Yet, journalism studies have rarely conceptualized these affective ties systematically, tending instead to analyse the journalism–politics relationship on an individual or interpersonal level. This paper introduces emotional communities as a framework to understand how shared emotion norms, values, and expressions structure professional relationships between journalists and politicians. Building on and extending existing community concepts – such as interpretive, practice-based, and imagined communities – it highlights the emotional dimension of professional life as both a source of cohesion and conflict. By linking emotions to processes of professional boundary-making, the concept of emotional communities provides an integrated lens for analysing the journalism–politics field. It opens new research avenues along temporal (how emotional dynamics evolve), spatial (how they differ across levels), and methodological (how they can be captured through multi-scalar designs) lines.