Social media plays an integral role in everyday life. While much research has focused on hate speech and its effects in virtual spaces, less attention has been devoted to positive forms of online communication. In this study Yulia Clausen and Tatjana Scheffler introduce the concept of candy speech (German: Flausch) to describe communicative practices characterized by empathy, care, and a sense of group cohesion within virtual communities. Drawing on a corpus of German-language YouTube comments, they define candy speech, distinguish its subtypes, and identify its linguistic features. Their findings reveal that candy speech is at least as prevalent as hate speech in online environments but remains notably underresearched. By analyzing its role in community building and emotional support, they argue for greater recognition of positive online language as a crucial component of computer-mediated communication, with the potential to counteract online hate and promote safer virtual environments.
Clausen, Y., & Scheffler, T. (2026). Flausch: Unterstützende Sprachhandlungen in sozialen Medien. Journal für Medienlinguistik: jfml = Journal for Media Linguistics, 8(1), 91-123. https://doi.org/10.21248/jfml.2026.79