ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as an introduction to the empirical sociological studies in this book, in which the authors explore what awkwardness is; how, where, and when it arises; and how people deal with it. The authors outline how the empirical research is embedded within the theories that were presented in the preceding chapters, and connect the four different contexts and occasions to the main theoretical concepts: awkwardness in everyday life, awkwardness at work, awkwardness in dating, and awkwardness in self-help videos. This chapter describes the background of each of these studies (referred to as EVERYDAY, WORK, DATING, and SELF-HELP in the subsequent empirical chapters), as well as the types of data used, and how this data is analyzed. EVERYDAY awkwardness uses Twitter data, a content analysis of news media articles, and interviews with students about social interactions after the COVID-19 pandemic. WORK draws upon ethnographic research and interviews within contemporary co-working spaces. DATING builds upon interviews with people active on online dating platforms. Finally, SELF-HELP contains a multimodal analysis of self-help videos available on YouTube.
