Digital Media: How social media changes the way we mourn or experience grief

The Effects of Social Media on Mourning and Grief
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The Effects of Social Media on Mourning and Grief
Mourning is an integral part of the society which occurs after the death of an individual. It is an essential aspect of the healing process of the bereaved individuals (Kern, Forman, & Gil-Egui, 2013). An analysis of mourning shows that it differs and contrasts considerably among different communities and individuals. Mourning has also changed significantly over time. The structure of mourning usually affects how individuals cope with the burden of grief. The advent of social media has facilitated social networking of people from different parts of the globe and different culture and customs. The above has significantly changed how many people mourn. Social channels or networking pools have provided new platforms which have enabled people to connect with each other and the deceased in excitedly unique ways. This paper describes research aimed at understanding the invention of social media, its alteration of the society’s mourning and grieving process. Although social media has created new platforms for the expression of pain and remorse, it has enabled the perversion of the deceased’s memory which complicates grief to those sharing in the loss.
Literature Review
This research focuses on people’s response to the loss of a loved one. It is crucial to distinguish the concepts of mourning and grief to have a better understanding of the issues under concern.

Mourning is the external manifestation of loss including people’s customs and rituals which served to commemorate the lost individuals and comfort the bereaved (Grover & Fowler, 2011 as cited in McEwen & Scheaffer, 2013). Grief, on the other hand, refers to internal aspects of loss, such as the range of emotions one experiences. Despite their differentiation, these concepts are inherently linked (Walter, 2015). One’s expression of their feelings affects their experience of those emotions significantly.
Throughout time, the societal structure has proven to be a significant determinant of the nature of grief and mourning in the populace. Ancient preindustrial societies lived in small rural communities. Such small villages would comprise on average two hundred people (Walters, 2015). Due to poor nutrition and healthcare, the mortality rate was high. People aimed at having huge families as a reflection of power and wealth but this only increased the population more. When the family lost a member, they would mourn communally since grief was a shared experience. Even so, people still had their unique experiences of grief.
The rise of prominent urban centers altered the social context for mourning substantially. Typically, even in large families, when someone died, the family members would be scattered over different areas. As a result, mourning would involve people who were mostly unknown to the bereaved. It was then that the concept of ‘supporting’ the bereaved was conceived. The advantage of this set of new customs was that mourners achieved a level of privacy which allowed them to grieve in the manner and measure that relieves them best (Walters, 2015). Even so, such isolations would sometimes overwhelm the individual requiring them to seek external help such as therapists to speak out their emotional and psychological outburst (Basinger, Wehrman & McAninch, 2016).
Mourning has changed drastically in the late twentieth century. Foremost, it has seen increased instances of public mourning, whereby the public mourns for significant personalities such as celebrities, actors, footballers to ordinary people who die in tragic events like accidents, terror infiltrations, and through catastrophic activities like earthquakes and tsunamis. Public mourning is sometimes useful to the bereaved who may feel comforted by the public effort, though others may find that it undermines their sad experience (Pennington, 2013). Social media has given rise to online and digital mourning, which has introduced new means of interaction between mourners themselves and with the society, or even with the dead. An in-depth analysis of this new form of mourning will expose how it has altered practices of mourning and experience of grief.
Methodology
For this research, an online search was performed using Google search engine using the keywords “online mourning,” “online grief,” “mourning on Facebook” and “mourning on social media.” Only peer-reviewed articles were selected for further evaluation. Initially, twenty articles were chosen. Four articles were excluded from the research for having poor research designs which affected the internal validity. Five articles were excluded since they focused on deeper aspects of mourning which are not relevant to this research project.
Findings and Discussion
Methods of Online Mourning
The Internet has facilitated the rise of several platforms of mourning. This development has led to the rise of an online memorial culture that transcends over the traditional methods of owing to the spread of the mobile technology and the integral pervasiveness of this digital culture. One of the means of online mourning is the writing of blogs. These blogs and polls are likened to illness autobiographies which existed before the internet (Brubaker, Hayes, & Dourish, 2013). Some blogs are written or even managed by those nearing death as a consequence of a prolonged disease or condition to allow their readers to stay updated on their present condition(s) and statuses. Photographs may be uploaded to the blog once the individual dies as was the case of the execution of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. These blogs are read by mourners to experience the final days of the deceased.
A funeral service is usually held after someone’s death. It is a rare occasion and for some is the epitome of mourning as it often entails the burial or cremation of the deceased (Bouc, Han, & Pennington, 2016). It may be assumed that the Internet and social media have a marginal role in funerals. This is because it is the occasion where many of the closely bereaved gather in one place. As a result, there exists little academic research on the influence of online networks on people’s mourning and bereavement. However, anecdotal evidence describes a paradigm shift in many funerals to being a celebration of an individual’s life. The organizers obtain images of the person’s life from social media and display such digital images to the attendees (Church, 2013). The Internet has further facilitated virtual funeral attendance. The service may be streamed online for those unable to make it physically at the burial or memorial sites. The formation of online communities has also led to the institution of online funerals. For example, when a 13-year old girl who was a fighter pilot in an online gaming community died of leukemia, other players performed an online fly-past for her funeral (Haverinen, 2010 as cited in Walter, Hourizi, Moncur, & Pitsillides, 2015).
Perhaps the most dominant form of online mourning has been memorialization. Even before the conception of social media, the internet facilitated the creation of cyber-cemeteries in the 1990s (Lingel, 2013). Cyber cemeteries were primarily used for a loss that did not necessarily warrant or discourage face-to-face relations such as the death of a pet, celebrity, or as a result of HIV/AIDS which was then stigmatized highly (Carroll & Landry, 2010). The cemeteries would often entail clicking on the image of the deceased to enter the cemetery. It is important, however, to note that some of these online sites were purposed only for commemoration and not grief, such as historical and genealogy sites.
Social media has transformed interpersonal communication. A lot of academic research on the use of digital media for mourning focuses on Facebook; since its inception, Facebook has snowballed and gained stable followership among people of different ages; from young to seniors. Currently, it boasts of approximately one billion active users, a number that continues to increase (Carroll & Landry, 2010). As a social networking site, Facebook provides two distinct avenues for mourners. Foremost, close family and friends can form memorial pages for the deceased. The other forum is the dead’s original Facebook account. Through these platforms, the mourners can discuss and comfort one another as well as commune with the deceased. People can talk in the memorial pages and collectively participate in rituals and behaviors that are customarily performed at wakes, funerals, and memorial services. The unique aspects of such digital communing are its virtual, public, direct, and eternal nature (Kern, Forman, & Gil-Egui, 2013). Their facilitation of dialogue between mourners and the deceased has raised it to a whole new level of grief expression (McEwen & Scheaffer, 2013).
Impacts on Mourning and Experience of Grief
Social media allows people to create personal pages where they upload and share personal information – which somehow preserves intricate aspects of their lives even after they die. In one research, interviewees were asked if social media pages eased the experience of grief. Social media preserves vital facets of the deceased’s identity. Many of the respondents admitted to regularly checking the pages of their lost ones while they grieved – and that they learned new things about them that they had not learned while they were alive (Walter, 2015). Such an experience makes them feel or experience the deceased ‘presence’, which lightens their internal grief.
In another survey, a majority of the respondents asserted they would like their social media accounts to remain active even after they passed. These developments support the continuing bond theory, which emerged in the 1990s that employs a therapeutic approach towards mourning by maintaining the bond between the mourner and the deceased (Walter et al., 2012). Social media has established itself as one of the platforms where people can easily maintain their bonds with the departed due to its instantaneous and flexible nature. People can quickly memorialize the dead by posting images, messages, comments, and other services provided by such sites at a convenience.
However, several studies show that while these simple outlets for emotional expression may be beneficial in the short-term, they may have inherent adverse effects on the mourners and their friends. Foremost, they may alter the deceased’s personal views substantially such that it renders their memory perverse (Walter et al., 2012). After one’s death, the community is gaining dominant control of shaping their online identity and presence. People who may not have been significant in their lives may alter their characters substantially that it presents a falsified image of their personality to the rest of the world; mainly other online users. In one study, a victim’s mother changed his online perception considerably that it offended other mourners who were affected by the false image. Among the affected were the victim’s wife and children (McEwen and Schaeffer, 2013). Besides, although sustaining bonds with the deceased may help the victims to release their emotions in a healthy manner, it may prevent them from accepting the fate of the deceased and move on – a most critical aspect of the grieving process (McEwen and Schaeffer, 2013).
People have overlapping attitudes and perceptions in the utilization of social media outlets for the expression of grief. As already mentioned, many people appreciate the direct outlet for communicating with the dead and hence form social networks for mourning with others. However, a considerable portion is against the practice of online memorialization (Pennington, 2013). Some of these people disdain the practice for its vanity, such that it encourages the participation of people who merely want to show that they knew or interacted with the dead (Bouc, Han, & Pennington, 2016). They believe a majority of those who grieve on these digital memorialization pages do not do so to benefit the memory of the dead. Such claims are supported by an analysis of the content posted on such pages. Unfortunately, not all the content on these digital pages speaks positively of the deceased.
Conclusion
Mourning aims to console the bereaved by helping them express sorrowful emotions in communion with others; friends, family, and workmates. Mourning has mostly been shaped by the structure and the functioning of the society over time, which largely determined the extent of the inclusion of the community in mourning practices. Social media has facilitated the creation of a global community such that individuals from different backgrounds interact as ‘friends.’ In doing so, the community is involved more extensively than ever before. The deceased’s page is usually preserved after death, which serves as a memorial to their existence. Friends and family members can log in and maintain close contact with the deceased through these pages. As such, social media has enabled the maintenance of the intimate connection between the living and the dead. This has immensely transformed the mourning culture and tradition. However, such platforms have had a negative impact on the mourners, such as preventing them from moving on with their lives. These digital platforms may also offer an easy access to any individual to memorialization pages. This open access may provide an arena for individuals with unworthy intentions to alter the deceased profiles in a manner that it paints an inaccurate image of their lives. All in all, with consideration of its relevant aspects, the new outlets for mourning availed by social media have benefited the solace of the bereaved more than worsened them.
References
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Bouc, A., Han, S., & Pennington, N. (2016). “Why are they commenting on his page?” Using Facebook profile pages to continue connections with the deceased. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, 635-643.
Carroll, B., & Landry, K. (2010). Logging On and letting out: Using online social networks to grieve and to mourn. Bulletin of Science, Technology, & Society, 30(5), 341-349.
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Pennington, N. (2013). You don’t de-friend the dead: An analysis of grief communication by college students through Facebook profiles. Death Studies, 37, 617635.
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Walter, T., Hourizi, R., Moncur, W., & Pitsillides, S. (2012). Does the internet change how we die and mourn? Overview and analysis. The Omega Source, 64(4), 275-302.