How Social Media Affects the View of Death

Social Media'due south Bear upon on Death and Mourning

How social media and pervasive digital culture has challenged the boundaries of privacy and intimacy in grieving practices and norms.

Introduction

In this paper, I will clarify the bear on of social media on death and death culture, one of the most primal aspects of humanity. In a study on how social media has altered public mourning, researchers framed death into three types: traditional, modern, and postmodern (Brubaker, Hayes, Dourish, 2013). These researchers categorize a traditional death as 1 that "was one time experienced in public within a customs, but with little forewarning," modern death is the confinement of the traditional death "to the private space of the home and hospital," and finally, postmodern decease "conflates the public and the individual: the private feelings of the dying and bereaved becomes the business organisation" (Brubaker et al, 2013). In this paper, I volition argue that in gimmicky gild, the expansive nature of social media, which lends itself to uses of wide-spread socialization, expression, and information, has enabled the private concerns of death and mourning to permeate the public sphere.

Historical Context of Grieving and Social Media

In modern Western grieving practices, "the dying and dead are sequestered–secluded within special places such as hospitals, hospices, and cemeteries–where they will not disrupt the everyday flow of modern life" (Walter, Hourizi, Moncur, Pitsillides, 2012). Like death and dying, grieving is also isolated to places of worship, the grave, or contained funeral services. Today, the sequestering of expiry is perpetuated by the notion that "even if [someone is] not hospitalized, their dying has go a medical matter" (Walter et al, 2012) rather than an emotional, spiritual, or religious one. Grief has also been sequestered through the disenfranchisement of sure socially unacceptable deaths, such as suicide, drug overdose, or AIDS (Moore, Magee, Gamreklidze, Kowaleski, 2017). Furthermore, after the 20th century and industrial revolution, the nearly common death shifted from infants to the elderly and the main mourners became "widowers living on their own or developed children who have long since left home" (Walter et al, 2012). This demographic of mourners is fragmented and their daily social interactions are ofttimes with people who never knew the deceased (Walter et al, 2012). In this disconnection of a mourner's social network, "grief has come to be defined as a individual experience, which others can 'support' just rarely share" (Walter et al, 2012).

How we dice and mourn has inverse over time, but due to the digital revolution, and then has how nosotros live, interact, and socialize. In fact, "every bit many every bit 55% of teenagers on the Internet read and post to social networking sites (SNSs) [and] adolescent communication ranges from topics such as romance, friends, parents, popular culture to substance use, sexuality, and depression" (Williams, Merten, 2009). Despite social media sites only being roughly 15 years erstwhile, they are already extremely entrenched in our daily lives and currently take an unparalleled two.two billion agile monthly users (Shaker, personal advice, Nov 9, 2018). The more social media expands, the more of our life we spend on these sites; in fact, some young generations have a virtual being before even being born through the posting of ultrasound photos (Leaver, 2015). On the other hand, there is an emerging phenomenon of virtual profiles outlasting the life of their users; there is no exact number of profiles belonging to deceased persons on Facebook, merely researchers have noted how "the digital revolution enables a plausible geography of the dead residing in internet" (Walter et al, 2012). Therefore it is not surprising that users are increasingly having to face death and grieving on social media.

Researchers similar Anita Whiting of Clayton Country University have studied these new models of interaction by using Rubin's 2008 Theory of Uses and Gratifications to sympathise why we use social media (Rubin, 2008). Whiting found ten primary gratifications of social media, simply only 3 are relevant to this paper: social interaction (the utilise of "social media to communicate and collaborate with others"), information seeking (the search for information or self-didactics), and expression of opinions (Whiting, Williams, 2013). In studying coping on social media, researchers have been confronted with new norms of unregulated cocky–publication. In this research, two advice models are used: (1) a one–to–many form of advice to broadcast information and (2) a ii–way form of communication that is a dialogue with others (Moore et al, 2017).

For the purposes of this newspaper, I have separated social media audiences using Granovetter's definition of weak ties and strong ties. On social media, "strong ties bond a person to a few close kin and friends" (Walter et al, 2012). In traditional and modern deaths, strong tied relationships would likely exist incorporated into the grieving process because they are a cadre office of one'southward social network, whether online or offline. Alternatively, "weak ties create a bridge to a diverse range of people offering a range of resource," (Walter et al, 2012) and as they alive dissimilar lives and operate in dissimilar social networks, these people may not have previously been aware or involved in mourning before social media. Thus, the electric current sequestration of death represents a modern death, but equally we will explore in this paper, the advancement and influence of social media platforms has spurred the postmodernist era of grieving.

The Use of Socialization in Grieving Online

With respect to Whiting's category of social interaction every bit a gratification for social media utilise, the basis of social media is to build and maintain social relationships (Whiting et al, 2013). Postmodern digital relationships differ from analog ones because socializing online tin be carried out from the comfort of your abode, provides a venue for emerging social communities based on interests, and are usually more durable to changing life circumstances (Fifty. Shaker, personal communication, November 16, 2018). On the other mitt, modern analog relationships are dependent on proximity, can often be based on shared experiences, are fixed or fleeting, and tin exist at habitation, work, or a third identify (L. Shaker, personal communication, November 16, 2018). Overall, social media and subsequent digital social networks have enabled the expansion of relationships by previous concrete limitations through "the removal of geographical barriers when using SNSs…[allowing] user to collaborate at a distance, resulting in a spatial expansion of the social processes around death and bereavement" (Wagner, 2018). The removal of these barriers allows for "sharing data with family unit or friends or sometimes start a dialog, … discussing the deceased'due south expiry with others… [and] discussing death with a broader mourning community" (Moore et al, 2017).

In the pursuit of connection with other mourners, specific features of social media, like "the cosmos of a Facebook group [which] facilitates communication between survivors," make it an apt platform to promote public mourning (Wagner, 2018). One griever noted, "I personally prefer the memorial group, because it's like a designated place for people to become and actively mourn together" (Wagner, 2018). This highlights the intention of collective grieving and how users are actively searching, through technological means, to notice other people in a similar situation. Facebook groups, over individual profiles, promote more public grief because "it [allows] users to make content public" while profiles "might exist restricted due to privacy settings." In conjunction, the Newsfeed and user profile "results in a broadening of the space in which content may exist displayed" (Wagner, 2018). Therefore, social media facilitates socialization with a broader community than has previously been attainable and thus helps transport grieving and death into the public sphere.

Furthermore, social media has helped expand social networks by promoting contact with and updates on weak–necktie relationships. In a content analysis of post–mortem virtual profiles, researchers found "the recurrence of comments from individuals who were peripheral friends (those on the outer circle of the social network of the deceased) or complete strangers" (Williams et al, 2009). Social media sites aid the "dissemination of information across previously split up social groups unified by SNSs" (Wagner, 2018). Thus, previously isolated social contexts, like school, work, or religion, are now visible to each other through ane mutual profile. In conclusion, the functions of Facebook invite distant friends, acquaintances, and even strangers to collaborate with a death that they were formerly marginalized from (Wagner, 2018). This leads to social media facilitating death as a postal service-modern, social experience again by introducing grief to the public sphere and inviting a wider range of people to bring together a commonage mourning.

Expression of Public Grief on Social Media

The social media gratification of expression differs from socialization because users are posting, commenting, or engaging with social media in lodge to express their own grieving for cocky-interested purposes, rather than to facilitate relationships with other mourners. In a survey about social media usage, 56% of respondents discussed how social media provided them with a platform to express thoughts and opinions while 32% mentioned the usage of surveillance and the power to "[watch] people or things and… what others are doing" (Whiting et al, 2013). These numbers provide a full general sense of how often people apply social media to express themselves or detect others' expression. Earlier the pervasive use of social media, the private and intimate thoughts of one person would stay in their mind or only be shared with close friends and strong ties. At present, "a number of people… write blogs about their experience of life threatening and terminal illness" (Walter et al, 2012). Even if social media users aren't engaging in mourning practices themselves, they are still "confronted with other people's mourning in the course of their everyday social media use" (Wagner, 2018).

In traditional and modern deaths, only those attending specific events, such equally memorials or burials, participated in mourning. However, now when someone dies, their virtual profile can still remain online and people tin continue to communicate and collaborate with the deceased long after they have passed. For example, the following adolescent is coping with the death of a friend who died over a year ago by posting on their wall: "… For [an assignment] I wrote about when [I found out] you lot had died…Well it was HARD to write [sic]. I cried so much… So I started talking about how much of a wonderful person you were… There was so much I had to become off of my chest about your decease. It was the first time I had expressed myself nigh it." (William, Merten, 2009) This temporal expansion of mourning, with permanent online spaces defended to the deceased, provide more opportunities for death-related expression to enter people's media diet. In this postmodern era, the private feelings of grief become the public's concern as they are broadcasted on social media.

The bulletin in a higher place demonstrates how users posting on a deceased'south wall often use linguistic communication directed towards the deceased, which signifies an ongoing attachment (William, Merten, 2009). One observer noted that they "thought no different [of online memorial] than putting flowers on a grave" (Brubaker et al, 2013). One major difference, notwithstanding, between flowers on a grave and online memorial posts is how many people can view this bereavement process. In posting to a public digital contour, posters contributed to a "collective coping situation" (William et al, 2009). In mourning, a social media platform unites a broader range of people than traditionally possible and therefore, when ane uses information technology to limited themselves, more than people are able to observe this demonstration than previously possible.

Ane written report looked into how the "the public nature of the contour [Facebook] Wall tin can exist seen as intrusive for those who adopt more private forms of morning" (Brubaker et al, 2013). A participant noted:"I think it's more that things made me a little uncomfortable… the idea that I'm seeing their personal grief. There were very personal communications from her to her sis and I felt but like I shouldn't be privy to those" (Brubaker et al, 2013). Although this newspaper does non address if publicizing grief is positive or negative, this annotate does illustrate how Western traditions take expectations for grief to be individual and how social media has disrupted or countered these traditions.

In dissimilarity with Facebook's verbal two-way communication model, Instagram more than explicitly broadcasts expressions of grief through photography and captions. Researchers conducted a content analysis of Instagram captions with the #Funeral. (Gibbs, Meese, Arnold, Nansen, and Carter, 2014). In these photographs, mourners were observed extending an expression of their grief to followers. The distribution of photos on Instagram "renders private images equally public property (Van Dijck, 2008, pp.14–15)" while also existence "forms of live communication" (Gibbs et al, 2014). In these scenarios, expression posting on social media is an instance of "public private speech… a genre of SNS communication…[that] in the case of postmortem profiles constitutes a form of public grief rarely bachelor otherwise" (Brubaker et al, 2013). Ultimately, those expressing themselves online ofttimes feel that it is private, "nearly like a confessional, yet there is in fact a wider audience" (Walter et al, 2012). Therefore, social media's wider audience in conjunction with "the ease with which non-experts can now upload" (Walter et al, 2012) allows expression of mourning to be publicized in an unparalleled way.

The Dissemination of Grief-Related Data on Social Media

As Whiting'due south research concluded, a gratification of social media use is information seeking and self-education (Whiting et al, 2013). While mourning, social media users are presented with information that is more readily bachelor and prominent in their social media diet than has traditionally been possible. The increased prevalence and accessibility of this death-related data helps ship death from a individual or isolated sphere into a more public i. The communicatory utility of social media facilitates the mass dissemination of information with others (Whiting et al, 2013).

Social media is based upon communication models that empower audiences to be producers. In this system, users are able to broadcast death-related information in order to "allow everybody know in 1 mass message… equally opposed to individual phone calls [and] text messaging (IP)" (Moore et al, 2017). In this model, social media helps to bring new and diverse information into a personal social sphere by bridging weak tie relationships. The features of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Instagram, tin become "useful tools in learning and sharing information to a large, geographically diverse group of people quickly and with minimal effort" (Rossetto, Lannutti, Strauman, 2014).

Social media's manual of death information is similar to the mode traditional paper obituaries disseminate information, merely now with an added latitude and ease. Even so, a newspaper'southward obituary is ordinarily sequestered to a alone department of the newspaper. Alternatively, on social media, death and mourning information appears "alongside a newsfeed of unrelated updates, memes, weblinks, photographs, and notifications" (Rossetto et al, 2014) and therefore integrates expiry with daily life to transport it into the public sphere. J.R. Brubaker summarizes this in his enquiry by outlining how social media platforms are agile athenaeum, meaning that they "both shop content from the by, and actively presents users with this past content" (Brubaker et al, 2013). Therefore, social media creates "an infrastructure for a new relationship with our social pasts- 1 in which failed romances, by embarrassments, only also deceased friends are resituated into our everyday utilise of SNSs" (Brubaker et al, 2013). With this understanding, social media brings mourning and death into the public sphere by disseminating information into collapsed social groups comprised of both weak and stiff tie relationships, and therefore engages a wider range of people.

Farther, many social media users referenced "learning about the death of a friend as a outcome of another friend's condition update" (Brubaker et al, 2013), contributing to how mourning has entered spaces where nosotros don't normally expect to meet information technology. Equally a outcome, at that place are "individuals who might have otherwise been unaware of an individual's decease without the aid of SNSs" (Brubaker et al, 2013) and therefore death has reached a broader customs.

Dissenting Views of the Impact of Social Media on Decease and Mourning

In contrast to the above enquiry, some scholars fence that features of social media actually promote the further privatization of death and mourning. Some of these studies reference a "bureaucracy of legitimate mourners," (Wagner, 2018) regarding who has the right to mourn on social media.This hierarchy tin contribute to feelings of self-doubt, shame, or insecurity and can dissuade mourners from expressing their grief thus leading to the privatization of mourning to close friends and family unit. However, this hierarchy exists regardless of social media and thus does not promote privatizing grief, simply rather represents a maintenance of the status-quo.

Other inquiry quoted participants in interviews proverb "it's easier to hide behind Facebook than to actually say what you lot are feeling to people… I'm pretty private about my emotions, then I mostly mourned online." Another participant notes, "the ability to share from 'behind a figurer screen' (IP) allows mourners to grieve without the awkwardness of face–to–face interactions" (Moore et al, 2017). These participants explain how social media allows people to evade in-person emotional conversations and vulnerability and this could farther privatize death by giving people a depersonalized and sanitized online culling. In rebuttal, this research newspaper has provided examples of persons using to limited deep emotions. Therefore, social media could also provide outlets for people who are afraid of interpersonal vulnerability to more than openly and honestly grieve and still promote expiry-related conversation.

Conclusion

In determination, in a modern and traditional settings, expiry and grieving were private phenomenons due to fragmented social groups of mourners combined with physical, isolated spaces, that did not disrupt daily life, existence dedicated to mourning. As social media has become more than encompassing and omnipotent, people accept migrated towards using social media to display their private concerns of death and grief, creating a postmodernist perspective. In search of support and social connection, mourners accept turned to social media to break downwardly geographical and social barriers and expand their mourning community. Furthermore, through features such as Facebook Walls or groups, commonage grieving online has thrived by promoting the bridging of weak-necktie relationships. The broadcasting nature of social media besides allows user to limited their grief on a more public theater, and therefore more people are forced to confront or observe natural grieving processes. Finally, the dissemination of information on social media allows users to hands broadcast necessary information virtually a decease or mourning to more people than has previously been possible. Therefore, in contemporary society, the expansive nature of social media, which lends itself to uses of broad-spread socialization, expression, and information, has enabled the private concerns of death and mourning to permeate the public sphere.

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