Free play is one of the few contexts in which children independently organise their social lives, providing a particularly relevant setting for examining how peer culture is produced and negotiated in everyday interaction. This study explored how preschool children shape peer culture through rules, social relationships, inclusion and exclusion, and shared meaning-making. A focused ethnography was conducted with 21 children aged 3 years 9 months to 7 years 2 months in an established mixed-age preschool group in Croatia. The observational period lasted one month and included 17 observation days. Data collected through observation, field notes, and four focus groups were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that children independently initiate and sustain play, jointly negotiate rules and roles, and create shared symbolic meanings. Group belonging is continually reaffirmed through participation, while temporary forms of exclusion were observed in different interactional contexts, including responses to disruption and restrictions on participation. Educator mediation occurred in some situations in which children did not resolve disagreements independently. The findings position children as competent social actors whose peer culture constitutes a meaningful form of social life and provide contextual insight into how these processes unfold within an established mixed-age preschool group.
Introduction This study examines sympathy as a socially organized emotion in Arabic-language digital discourse about suicide. Drawing on the sociology of emotions, suicide stigma, and digital death studies, it investigates how public Facebook comment cultures distribute compassion, blame, and moral worth after suicide. Methods A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 2,132 publicly visible comments responding to three highly discussed suicide cases. Comments were coded for inferred public gender presentation, emotional orientation, reported case context, and dominant interpretive frame. Pearson chi-square tests were calculated from raw counts; Cramer’s V , 95% Wilson confidence intervals, and sensitivity analyses are reported. Results Comments from accounts inferred as female were more often sympathetic than comments from accounts inferred as male (60.0% vs. 40.5%; V = 0.15), and commenter composition differed across the three cases ( V = 0.29). Religious framing was the most common interpretive repertoire (48.6%) and could accompany both mercy and condemnation. Discussion The study develops the concept of a moral economy of sympathy to describe the social rules through which digital publics allocate compassion after suicide. Because each case combines a particular person, national setting, reported circumstance, and media framing, the findings are case-specific and should not be generalized to Arab publics.
