Continuing bonds in the age of social networking: Facebook as a modern-day medium

Abstract

As Facebook's popularity grows and endures, many profiles are becoming gravemarkers of the dead, scattered among the profiles of the living. The integration of Facebook usage into many people's everyday lives makes it unsurprising that ongoing interaction by the living with deceased persons’ profiles is increasingly commonplace, but this is little studied. This research undertook qualitative document analysis of 943 posts on five ‘in-memory-of’ Facebook groups and an interpretative phenomenological analysis of three interviews with bereaved Facebook users. Four themes arose: (1) modes of address, (2) beliefs about communications, (3) experience of continuing bonds, and (4) nature and function of the Facebook community. The article has a threefold aim: (1) to contextualise the findings within a sociologically focused version of the continuing bonds theory of bereavement; (2) to argue that Facebook, as a modern-day ‘medium’, may supplant more traditional ‘mediator deathworkers’; and (3) to enhance bereavement professionals’ awareness and understanding of bereavement in an age increasingly marked by technologically mediated relationships, and to thus inform clinical practice.

Keywords:

• Facebook
• online mourning
• continuing bonds
• bereavement
• mediator deathwork
• posthumous communication