A community for grieving: affordances of social media for support of bereaved parents

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study bereaved parents' use of a closed peer grief support community on Facebook and the features of the community that are important to them. The death of a child is an uncomfortable subject in most contemporary societies. This limits the exploration of experiences and possibilities for coping with grief. However, with the introduction of social media, this has changed. Theoretical perspectives on parental grief recognizing the importance of continued relational bonds with the lost child are used, together with the ontological assumption that social media enhance the dissolving of private/public and time/space. This study is based on questionnaire, interviews, and content from the closed peer grief support community, to which the research team has insider access. The community encompasses a diverse range of experiences and stages of grief, independent of the time elapsed since the loss of a child. Bereavement of children of all ages and from all conceivable causes of death is distributed among the members. The results show how the affordances of social media become vital resources for coping with grief in ways not available previously, comprising aspects of the closed nature of the group, shared experiences, time, and accessibility.

Keywords:

• Parental grief
• Grief support
• Digital and mobile technologies
• Social media
• Affordances
• Closed community

Notes

[1] This example is an authentic status update taken from a closed group on Facebook for bereaved parents. The text has been pseudonymized and is included here with the informed consent by the author of the posting. The text has been translated into English from the original Swedish.

[2] The Swedish word form “barn” is identical in both singular and plural and corresponds to the English translation “child” and “children,” which neatly fits the purpose of inclusion in the Swedish grief support organization.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the University of Gothenburg Learning and Media Technology Studio – LETStudio (http://www.letstudio.gu.se/). The study was conducted in collaboration with a Swedish peer support organization for bereaved parents, VFSB (www.vsfb.se).