Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

No One Dies in The Virtual World:

The Use of Social Media in remembering deceased family and friends for adolescents.
Gregory D. Barber Jr.
Morehouse College

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Abstract
The loss of a loved one is one of the most traumatic events a person can experience in
their life (Dowrenwend & Dowrenwend, 1974). Sometimes, when this experience is not
correctly handled, people experience a disorder called complicated grief disorder, also referred to
as CGD which has been correlated with a lower quality of life and mental health (Boelen and
Prigerson, 2007). Therefore, much research has focused on the ways in which people express
themselves while simultaneously keeping their loss loved ones alive. Many cultures practice
different methods of remembering a loved one who has died such as second line amongst Creoles
or Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). It is also the responsibility of the families and friends
are charged with memorializing those deaths and ensuring that those deceased family members
are hopefully, not forgotten (Klass and Walter, 2001). Friends, family, and countless others create
meaning out of their loved ones death in the ways in which they choose to celebrate our lives
and to mourn our passing. According to Van Gennep (1960), death ceremonies are rites of
passage for both the deceased and for the living. Yet, with the new rise in technology, researchers
have recently seen a spike in a new means of remembering loss friends and family: social media.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is conduct a literature review of the research present
discussing the use of social media in remember dead family and friends.
Keywords: Trauma, Social Media, Death Practices, Remembrance

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

The Use of Social Media in Remembering Deceased Family and Friends

The Death Process
Death, dying, and bereavement are universal and intimate processes that everyone will
experience eventually, both from a dying persons perspective and through grieving for the loss
of a loved one. In both cases the person experiences a great loss in their life, and the experience
is processed differently every time. The grief experience is inevitable for both cases. We either
speak of a person who is dying and therefore grieving for their loss, the loss of their autonomy,
or of their future. For example, a dying mother is grieving that she will not be able to see her son
have his first child while the son is grieving the loss of not seeing her mother.
Nobody can conceptualize the experience of death, dying and through all the same lens.
Even if the same person is experiencing another loss, different mechanisms and coping skills will
arise. Researchers in the field of grief often use the Kubler-Ross model in discussing the five
stages of grief. The first stage, denial, is characterized by not believing that, that loved one had
transitioned. The second stage is anger characterized by becoming frustrated and stating such
things as Why me? or This is not fair!. The third stage involves bargaining or negotiation.
This stage tend to manifest more so as the griever asking that they be taken instead of their loved
one. The fourth stage tends to be the longest one as it deals with depression and uncontrollable
spells of sadness. The final and fifth stage is accepting and looking forward to the future.
Regardless. the loss of a loved one is still one of the most traumatic events a person can
experience in their life (Dowrenwend & Dowrenwend, 1974). However, during the Middle Ages,
death was understood as an inevitable experience. Yet, with the increase in life-saving medical
technologies, ease of geographical mobility and the care of dying family members transferred to
institutions, life is often extended and death frequently is a private experience. Coupled with the

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

prevalence of violence depicted on the news and the perpetual public presentation of death
through the media, the understanding of the death process has changed.
The Understanding of Death
Death is understood differently among adults and children. For adults, the concept of
death is complex and multifaceted, incorporating social and cultural traditions and beliefs,
personal and emotional issues, religious doctrines and conceptual understandings. While
different researchers argue what constitutes a mature death concept (Slaughter, 2005), there is a
consensus that for adults, death is understood as a biological event, and this biological
understanding impacts the other facets of this complex concept. Adults recognize that death
comes to all living things, that death is the final stage in the life cycle, that it is inevitable and
irreversible, and that it is ultimately caused by a breakdown in the functioning of the body.
In comparison, children have trouble grasping the five main concepts that are
foundational in understanding death: finality, irreversibility, universality, non-functionality and
causality. it is imperative that children understand that death is the final stage of life, death is
irreversible, all living things must die, bodily function cease at death and there are multiple
factors that can influence death. Universality and irreversibility are acquired first, by age 5 or 6
years old. The other components of understanding death are later acquired around the age of 11,
however, previous death experiences can also impact peoples ability to understand death. In a
study conducted by Arguello, Butler and Joyce (2000) about parents word choice when
discussing negative life events with their children, that depending on parents previous death
experience effect how they talk to their kids about and what words they use. For example,
parents with a more mature understanding of death, parents will say words like died or dead

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

instead of parents with less mature understanding who said words like moved on. These
parental experiences influences childrens likelihood of understanding death.
Social Media
According to Forrester Research, in January 2009, the online social networking
application Facebook registered more than 175 million active users. The amount of friends on
Facebook is slightly less than the population of Brazil at 190 million people and over twice the
population of Germany at 80 million. Also according to Forrester Research, The growth of
Facebook as well as other social media such as Instagram and Twitter was not just limited to
teenagers but also older generations such as Generation X and Baby Boomers. Therefore, it is not
surprising that social media provides an opportunity for online memorial pages. As the mourning
process has shifted in the United States, it now involves both private and public spaces. Although
many of these aspects are private, the need to share news of the death and bring mourners
together means that family members or others must publicly distribute the death announcement,
typically through newspaper obituaries, churches, or other venues. Social media has primarily
reshaped this process, due to their abilities of persistence, replicability, scalability, and
searchability (Boyd, 2010).
Literature Review
In a study conducted by Marwick and Ellison (2012), the researchers seeks to understand
how the technical and social affordances of social network sites, specifically Facebook, affect
ones ability to communicate with different audiences. Using online Facebook memorial pages as
a research site, the researchers examine how these affordances affect portrayals of the deceased

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

by answering two research questions: 1. How do the technical and social affordances of
Facebook reshape the public presentation of deceased individuals and public displays of grief
and 2. How is context collapse managed when the subject of the page is not there to manage
impressions. Data was collected for the study by primarily looking at restricted memorial pages.
The researchers used several methods to find memorial pages. First, the researchers used
Facebooks search bar to find pages that included R.I.P., which typically resulted in the most
recently updated memorial pages on the site. They then used Google to search the query
site:facebook.com and a vocabulary of memorial page-related words. Finally, the researchers
looked at posts to that included the facebook.com URL. Although many of the RIP page links
were broken as they might have been expired, the researchers also carefully captured these pages
soon after they were posted to the site. In total, 62 memorial pages were found using this method
and 37 were used for the analysis.
From the analysis, two primary themes emerged. First, mourners grapple with both
benefits and challenges of public and privateness. Second, in the absence of the subject, context
collapse is observed, but we see audience members selectively participating in impression
management to compensate. Conflicts are settled based partially on a hierarchy of legitimacy in
which family and close friends are more valid than acquaintances, and, especially, grief
tourists.
In conclusion, the study suggested that Facebook is an effective platform for sharing
memories and participating in the grieving process. It allows people to express grief and mourn
with friends in a familiar setting. The sites massive adoption and immediacy increase the
chances of reaching a wide audience of people who knew the deceased, as opposed to a news-

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

paper obituary. This publicness, however, has both costs and benefits, as we see in instances of
context collapse, trolls, and impression management of the deceased. Moreover, the specific
technical affordances of Facebook, such as the way page creation is managed, the use of status
metrics, and the discovery of pages through the News Feed, has particular effects on how this
publicity is experienced and managed.
Similarly, in another study using Facebook as a platform to discuss social media and
death, obtain 265 people to participate in their study. 205 (77%) were female and 58 (22%) were
male. Participant ages ranged from 18 to 64 with an average age of 26.7. The racial breakdown
of the sample was 225 identified as white, 13 identified as Latino, 10 identified as Asian
American, 5 identified as African-American and 7 identified as being racially mixed.
Researchers were able to recruit their participants through three methods: departmental calls for
participants, network sampling, and snowball sampling. Participants were then asked to think of
a time when someone they knew died.
Three themes emerged the first news dissemination, which described the way Facebook
served a function, similar to obituaries in a newspaper which allowed people to share and learn
information about death. The second, was preservation which described participants experiences
on Facebook when some they knew died and how they preserved the deceased. The final was
community which included experiences related to the participants connection and
communication with people other than the deceased. It was suggested that Facebooks function
as a means of social interaction, information dissemination and connection. This influence
Facebook to be a source of coping and support as social media become a more prominent part of
societies lives.

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Following the trend of the previous two studies, in the article The Grief Grapevine:
Facebook memorial pages and adolescent bereavement, a review is conducted to look at the
ways that adolescents express their grief on the social networking site Facebook after the loss of
a peer. In the first section, which describes grief, mourning and bereavement from an adolescent
perspective. It is understood that adolescents can often get mixed messages about the purpose of
grief and mourning and often feel that by keeping their loss peer alive, that how they find
acceptance in their death. It then looks as why Facebook is appealing to a grieving adolescents.
The primary reason why Facebook is a great platform is because it creates a network of
grievers and give the grievers a sense of belonging. Also, being online allows adolescents who
may not be able to verbal expressive themselves another opportunity to do so in a healing
manner (DeGroot, 2012). This article also discuss how memorial pages can enable schools to
successfully help with the grieving process when they experience the death of peer. Also, social
networks are a good starting point for discussion with students about grief and loss and how to
negative through the grieving process.
The social media platform, Facebook, again was use in a study conducted by Irwin
(2012). This study purposed itself on looking at the phenomenon of Facebook memorial pages
and how this research about online social networking environments can contribute to the
grounded theory of continuing bonds. The researcher used a qualitative document analysis
(QDA) to guide the content analysis of 1,270 Wall postings on Facebook memorial pages. The
study suggested that individuals supplement traditional bereavement rituals, such as funerals
(which often signaled the termination of bonds) with new, technologically-situated ritualized and
public spaces (such as Facebook) for continuing bonds with the deceased. The research also
suggested that Facebook members can create and maintain pages dedicated to the deceased,

Running head: NO ONE DIES IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

those left behind can also provide a type of virtual immortality, ensuring that their deceased
friends, family members, and others are not forgotten.
Imbuing cultural relevance into look at death practices and remembrance on a global
context, a study conducted by Mitchell, Stephenson, Cadell and MacDonald (2012) analyzed
virtual memorialization and the changing concept of childhood death and parental bereavement
on the internet in Canada. The study was a component of a larger interdisciplinary project on
parental bereavement where several open-ended questions were asked: What are the experiences
of bereaved parents in Canada? How do these experiences align with or differ from the ways in
which the impact of the death of a child is understood and represented in Canadian social policy
(e.g., bereavement leave), popular culture (such as film, news), and especially in professional
bereavement care. The researchers searched for on-line and virtual memorials using both
broad search engines such as Google and specifically looked for child and teen memorials. They
also looked at multiple social networking sites such as Facebook as well as Myspace and
YouTube. Previously with the other studies conducted, the analysis suggested that the dead can
now live on visual and social networks through the web as well as creating a network or forum
for bereaved parents to have a network to grieve. It also raises the notion that parents get so
attached to this memorial that it becomes difficult to leave the virtual place they produce. For this
would mean both abandoning the deceased child, ending a form of parenting, and severing the
on-going relationships with the dead that others family, friends and even strangers have
developed.
Similarly, in Gibbs, Nansen and Arnold (2015), the researchers uses another social media
platform, Instagram to explore funeral practices. The research first began with a meta-analysis of
scholarship on social media and death. From the previous research, the researchers predict there

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10

is an ever-presence of intersect of digital culture with traditional memorializing practices. The

article then begins compiling work focusing on how the dead is portrayed in social media,
Instagram and its specific vernacular, which include hashtags and geo-filters and finally, the
materiality of death and popular culture surrounding death. The research suggested that
Instagram differs from other digital platforms that have previously been the focus of research on
social media and death. Instagram, is different from Facebook or other textual-based platforms
because it is solely oriented around photo and video-sharing. Also, while some features such as
tagging, liking and commenting are common, other available features such as applying image
filters are apparently less so. In turn, the ways in which the platform is put to use differ
substantially from other social media.
The death process has changed drastically since the Middle Ages as medical technology,
social mobility and transference of ailing family members has been on a constant incline. This
change has also influenced adults and childrens understanding of death. Now, with the rise of
social media as a platform for public display of mourning, there has been conflicting research
presenting whether or not social media is a successful or detrimental tactic in helping people
mourn with the death of a friend or a family member. While social media provides people to talk
about death on a large scale, express emotions through non-verbal platforms and build networks
with other people who have similar experiences, the social media platform also leave room for
internet trolls and dampening the understanding of death.
Another component that can be effective and problematic is the sense of immortality that
the virtual create, making it difficult for people to come to turns with the fact that the person has
actually died. Still, social media as a platform to mourn can be beneficial to many and help
create new death practices to grieve.

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11

Works Cited
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Ellison, A. M. (2012). There Isnt Wifi in Heaven! Negotiating Visibility on Facebook
Memorial Pages. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.
Frost, M. (2014, December). The Grief Grapevine: Facebook Memorial Pages and Adolescent
Bereavement. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 24(2), 256-265.
Irwin, M. D. (2015). Mourning 2.0Continuing Bonds Between the Living and the Dead on
Facebook . Omega - Journal of Death and Dying, 72(2), 119-150.
Lisa M Mitchell, P. H. (2014, December 17). Death and grief on-line: Virtual memorialization
and changing concepts of childhood death and parental bereavement on the Internet.
Health Sociology Review.
Martin Gibbs, J. M. (2014, August 31). #Funeral and Instagram: death, social media, and
platform vernacular. Information, Community and Society, 255-268.
Martin Gibbs, M. A. (2015, March). #Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media, and Platform
Vernacular. Information, Communication & Society.
Slaughter, V. (2005, November). Young Children's understanding of death. Australian
Psychology, 40(3), 179-186.