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Orienting to Networked Grief: Situated Perspectives of Communal Mourning on Facebook

Authors:

Jed R. Brubaker,

Gillian R. Hayes,

Melissa MazmanianAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 3, Issue CSCW

Article No.: 27, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/3359129

Published: 07 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Contemporary American experiences of death and mourning increasingly extend onto social network sites, where friends gather to memorialize the deceased. That "everyone grieves in their own way'' may be true, but it forecloses important questions about how people evaluate these expressions, their relationship to others who are grieving, and impacts on their own experiences of grief. Drawing from mixed-methods research conducted over five years, we describe how individuals position themselves within and evaluate expressions of networked grief. We start by identifying five orientations -- reinforcing, supporting, transferring, objecting, and isolating -- that describe how individuals evaluate actions of grievers, position themselves relative to the network, and act when they encounter grief. We then describe factors and tensions that influence how individuals arrive at these orientations. Based on our findings, we argue that the design of social media can be sensitized to diverse needs by adopting a situated perspective within a dynamic post-mortem network.

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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020101
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Index Terms

Orienting to Networked Grief: Situated Perspectives of Communal Mourning on Facebook
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms
      1. Social media
      2. Social networks
    2. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing
2. Social and professional topics
  1. User characteristics

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 3, Issue CSCW

November 2019

5026 pages

EISSN:2573-0142

DOI:10.1145/3371885

Editors:
Airi Lampinen
Stockholm University, Sweden
,
Darren Gergle
Northwestern University, USA
,
David A. Shamma
FXPAL, USA

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Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Published: 07 November 2019

Published in PACMHCI Volume 3, Issue CSCW

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Sumiala JJacobsen M(2024)Digital Death and Spectacular DeathSocial Sciences10.3390/socsci1302010113:2(101)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020101
Toplean A(2024)The glocalization of death in the digital age: traits and limitsFrontiers in Communication10.3389/fcomm.2024.14563049Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1456304
Banks J(2024)Deletion, departure, death: Experiences of AI companion lossJournal of Social and Personal Relationships10.1177/02654075241269688Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
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