Mourning 2.0: Continuing Bonds
This study examines the burgeoning phenomenon of Facebook memorial pages and how this dynamic, o... more This study examines the burgeoning phenomenon of Facebook memorial pages and how this dynamic, online social networking environment can contribute to the existing literature related to Klass et al’s (1996) continuing bonds thesis. Contrary to Klass and Walter’s (2001) findings that in contemporary Western culture, individuals lack the cultural framework in which to incorporate the paranormal co-presence of the deceased into their lives, the Facebook users in my sample chose to express publically their ongoing paranormal experiences with the deceased, regardless of a possible lack of cultural framework or performative script for doing so. My project demonstrates that, increasingly, individuals supplement traditional bereavement rituals, such as funerals, which often signaled the termination of bonds, with new, technologically-situated ritualized spaces (such as Facebook) for continuing bonds with the deceased. I argue that memorial pages constitute a new ritualized and public space for maintaining these continued bonds and that individuals exhibit several types of bonding interactions with the deceased. I conducted a content analysis on a purposively selected sample of 12 public Facebook “pages” where I coded 1,270 individual Wall postings. Analyses demonstrated that many individuals routinely used these Walls to continue their relationships with the deceased. This research highlights how individuals have transcended the limitations of time and physical space in relation to traditional bereavement behavior and rituals and how data found on public websites, such as Facebook, can be used to further theorize bereavement and to demonstrate continue bonds between the living and the dead.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Mourning 2.0 - book chapter forthcoming
Other
I have accepted an invitation by Dr. Klass to contribute to the revised edition of his groundbrea... more I have accepted an invitation by Dr. Klass to contribute to the revised edition of his groundbreaking work (still in print after 20 years!) Continuing Bonds, New Understandings of Grief, with him writing:
"Your interesting article 'Mourning 2.0—Continuing Bonds Between the Living and the Dead on Facebook' that nicely both critiques and extends the continuing bonds model prompted this invitation. Your chapter will make a signification contribution to Section 3..."
Section Three: Increasingly the field of bereavement studies is shifting away from grief as an individual experience toward the interpersonal and social nature of grief and narrative reconstruction. The third section of the book is on how continuing bonds function in social/cultural systems from families to nations. Sociologists and anthropologists explore how continuing bonds fit into sociological theory, how continuing bonds are expressed in different cultural settings, as well as how developments like social media incorporate and shape continuing bonds in the culture they create.
Again, I am both ecstatic and humbled that this wonderful scholar has selected me for this new version and am grateful that my work is having a positive impact on both the bereaved and within the discipline.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Books
My chapter (23) focuses on continuing bonds between the living and the dead on Facebook.
In the... more My chapter (23) focuses on continuing bonds between the living and the dead on Facebook.
In the 20 years after the term was introduced into bereavement studies, continuing bonds went from being dismissed and pathologized to being a fully recognized and accepted phenomenon in bereavement scholarship and practice. Indeed, continuing bonds can now be seen not just as a phenomenon in grief but as a way of characterizing and expanding on grief itself. The concept of continuing bonds allows us to enrich therapeutic techniques that help the bereaved, to expand our ability to understand bereavement in other cultures both, to focus the philosophic questions in bereavement studies, to transfer what we learn about bereavement to how we study other significant losses, as well as to begin to include a wider range of academic disciplines in the study of grief. Contributors in Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Directions for Research and Practice provide a comprehensive overview of developments in the two decades after its inception. Clinically-based contributors show psychological counseling can be more effective when continuing bonds are included. Other chapters report on grief in different cultural settings, open the discussion about the truth and reality of our interactions with the dead, and show how new cultural developments like social media change the ways we relate to those who have died. " The predecessor of this book (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996) persuasively argued that the natural course of bereavement involves not relinquishing bonds with the dead, but rather retaining them. In a remarkably short time this " new look " in the study of grief has emerged as a major challenger to the dominant paradigm, generating a sizable body of research and practice substantiating, extending, and applying its insights in both scholarly and practical contexts of support and therapy. Just how revolutionary the continuing bonds model has been in reorienting scholarship and practice in the field of bereavement studies is clearly documented in this intriguing successor volume edited by Dennis Klass and Edith Maria Steffen. Amply sampling the breadth and depth of contemporary contributions to the field, various chapters demonstrate how the ongoing relationship with the deceased is woven into the fabric of leading models of grief, including Two-Track, posttraumatic growth, narrative, attachment and meaning reconstruction approaches. Similarly, historical and cultural scholarship documents the pervasive role of relations between the living and dead in sustaining social, political and religious systems of meaning and power, and the investment that cultural stakeholders have in regulating their expression. Complementing these more macro perspectives on the phenomenon, other contributions provide penetrating close-ups of the unique significance of continuing bonds for such populations as parents mourning children, college students using social
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Beyond the Threshold book review Mortality Journal
Uploads
"Your interesting article 'Mourning 2.0—Continuing Bonds Between the Living and the Dead on Facebook' that nicely both critiques and extends the continuing bonds model prompted this invitation. Your chapter will make a signification contribution to Section 3..."
Section Three: Increasingly the field of bereavement studies is shifting away from grief as an individual experience toward the interpersonal and social nature of grief and narrative reconstruction. The third section of the book is on how continuing bonds function in social/cultural systems from families to nations. Sociologists and anthropologists explore how continuing bonds fit into sociological theory, how continuing bonds are expressed in different cultural settings, as well as how developments like social media incorporate and shape continuing bonds in the culture they create.
Again, I am both ecstatic and humbled that this wonderful scholar has selected me for this new version and am grateful that my work is having a positive impact on both the bereaved and within the discipline.
In the 20 years after the term was introduced into bereavement studies, continuing bonds went from being dismissed and pathologized to being a fully recognized and accepted phenomenon in bereavement scholarship and practice. Indeed, continuing bonds can now be seen not just as a phenomenon in grief but as a way of characterizing and expanding on grief itself. The concept of continuing bonds allows us to enrich therapeutic techniques that help the bereaved, to expand our ability to understand bereavement in other cultures both, to focus the philosophic questions in bereavement studies, to transfer what we learn about bereavement to how we study other significant losses, as well as to begin to include a wider range of academic disciplines in the study of grief. Contributors in Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Directions for Research and Practice provide a comprehensive overview of developments in the two decades after its inception. Clinically-based contributors show psychological counseling can be more effective when continuing bonds are included. Other chapters report on grief in different cultural settings, open the discussion about the truth and reality of our interactions with the dead, and show how new cultural developments like social media change the ways we relate to those who have died. " The predecessor of this book (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996) persuasively argued that the natural course of bereavement involves not relinquishing bonds with the dead, but rather retaining them. In a remarkably short time this " new look " in the study of grief has emerged as a major challenger to the dominant paradigm, generating a sizable body of research and practice substantiating, extending, and applying its insights in both scholarly and practical contexts of support and therapy. Just how revolutionary the continuing bonds model has been in reorienting scholarship and practice in the field of bereavement studies is clearly documented in this intriguing successor volume edited by Dennis Klass and Edith Maria Steffen. Amply sampling the breadth and depth of contemporary contributions to the field, various chapters demonstrate how the ongoing relationship with the deceased is woven into the fabric of leading models of grief, including Two-Track, posttraumatic growth, narrative, attachment and meaning reconstruction approaches. Similarly, historical and cultural scholarship documents the pervasive role of relations between the living and dead in sustaining social, political and religious systems of meaning and power, and the investment that cultural stakeholders have in regulating their expression. Complementing these more macro perspectives on the phenomenon, other contributions provide penetrating close-ups of the unique significance of continuing bonds for such populations as parents mourning children, college students using social
"Your interesting article 'Mourning 2.0—Continuing Bonds Between the Living and the Dead on Facebook' that nicely both critiques and extends the continuing bonds model prompted this invitation. Your chapter will make a signification contribution to Section 3..."
Section Three: Increasingly the field of bereavement studies is shifting away from grief as an individual experience toward the interpersonal and social nature of grief and narrative reconstruction. The third section of the book is on how continuing bonds function in social/cultural systems from families to nations. Sociologists and anthropologists explore how continuing bonds fit into sociological theory, how continuing bonds are expressed in different cultural settings, as well as how developments like social media incorporate and shape continuing bonds in the culture they create.
Again, I am both ecstatic and humbled that this wonderful scholar has selected me for this new version and am grateful that my work is having a positive impact on both the bereaved and within the discipline.
In the 20 years after the term was introduced into bereavement studies, continuing bonds went from being dismissed and pathologized to being a fully recognized and accepted phenomenon in bereavement scholarship and practice. Indeed, continuing bonds can now be seen not just as a phenomenon in grief but as a way of characterizing and expanding on grief itself. The concept of continuing bonds allows us to enrich therapeutic techniques that help the bereaved, to expand our ability to understand bereavement in other cultures both, to focus the philosophic questions in bereavement studies, to transfer what we learn about bereavement to how we study other significant losses, as well as to begin to include a wider range of academic disciplines in the study of grief. Contributors in Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Directions for Research and Practice provide a comprehensive overview of developments in the two decades after its inception. Clinically-based contributors show psychological counseling can be more effective when continuing bonds are included. Other chapters report on grief in different cultural settings, open the discussion about the truth and reality of our interactions with the dead, and show how new cultural developments like social media change the ways we relate to those who have died. " The predecessor of this book (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996) persuasively argued that the natural course of bereavement involves not relinquishing bonds with the dead, but rather retaining them. In a remarkably short time this " new look " in the study of grief has emerged as a major challenger to the dominant paradigm, generating a sizable body of research and practice substantiating, extending, and applying its insights in both scholarly and practical contexts of support and therapy. Just how revolutionary the continuing bonds model has been in reorienting scholarship and practice in the field of bereavement studies is clearly documented in this intriguing successor volume edited by Dennis Klass and Edith Maria Steffen. Amply sampling the breadth and depth of contemporary contributions to the field, various chapters demonstrate how the ongoing relationship with the deceased is woven into the fabric of leading models of grief, including Two-Track, posttraumatic growth, narrative, attachment and meaning reconstruction approaches. Similarly, historical and cultural scholarship documents the pervasive role of relations between the living and dead in sustaining social, political and religious systems of meaning and power, and the investment that cultural stakeholders have in regulating their expression. Complementing these more macro perspectives on the phenomenon, other contributions provide penetrating close-ups of the unique significance of continuing bonds for such populations as parents mourning children, college students using social