New mourners, old mourners: online memorial culture as a chapter in the history of mourning

Abstract

How does online mourning differ from offline mourning? Throughout history, demographic, social and technological changes have altered mourners' social relationships with both the living and the dead, and hence their experiences of grief. Online technologies comprise the latest chapter in this story; earlier chapters include family/community mourning (pre-industrial), private mourning (twentieth century) and public mourning (turn of the millennium). Pervasive social media in which users generate their own content have significantly shifted mourners' social interactions and the norms that govern them, partly in new directions (such as enfranchising previously stigmatised griefs; more potential for conflict between mourners and others) but partly returning to something more like the relationships of the pre-industrial village (such as everyday awareness of mortality, greater use of religious imagery, more potential for conflict among mourners). Online, mourners can experience both greater freedom to be themselves and increased social pressure to conform to group norms as to who should be mourned and how.

Keywords:

• Bereavement
• Grief
• Pervasive social media
• Sequestration
• Heaven
• Angels

Notes

[1] The students quoted are all white English, in their early 20s. They have given permission to be quoted here.

[2] For example: “Brazil judge orders FB memorial page removed” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22286569 Accessed 1 June 2014.

[3] Thanks to Dijk Kasperowski for pointing me to the distinction between technologies that progressively solve problems, and those that just move solutions around like deck chairs.