Trauma in Real Time: Talking and Avoiding Online Conversations About the Death of Princess Diana

Abstract

Research on talking about trauma as a means of coping typically relies on retrospective self-reports. This study analyzed Internet chat room conversations about the death of Princess Diana for 4 weeks after her death to begin to map the ways people naturally talk about shared disasters and to seek evidence of social stages of coping. In the 1st hours and days, people exhibited high levels of personal and emotional responses to the loss of Diana. Linguistic analyses revealed strong evidence of collective shared grief in the 1st week, with a shift from greater levels of collective language to individual language after the 1st week. Ratings of the chat-room transcripts by judges revealed a shift from largely compassionate to largely hostile comments over the 4-week period. Advantages and complications of Internet chat rooms as a data source are considered.