This week I would like to look at the whole mourning process that takes place on line, as a part of cyber culture, via social networking platforms such as MySpace but more commonly Facebook.
The process following a death and subsequent mourning takes place as following as documented during my research in Facebook:
1) status updates on a death by immediate friends
2) status updates by acquaintances on death
3) existential style updates by friends of friends who are stimulated to think about death and loss
4) writing on wall of person who has lost someone offering solace to them
5) writing on wall of the person who has died by friends and acquaintances normally citing bible passages, a shared experience and memory of the deceased and mostly short messages like 'RIP, you will be missed' or 'you were a great person' in which Facebook friends get a chance to say goodbye
6) formation of memorial groups which are visited throughout the year and used as a tool to make annual memorial messages
Why we mourn on-line
It seems that in this day and age that when people loose loved ones or friends to death, specifically the age group of high school and tertiary education students, that they turn to Facebook as an open platform to mourn and consolidate with their friends and family rather than approach counsellors or other real person, 'face-to-face' outlets to mourn.
In an article on mourning and trends on Facebook, a doctor and grief counsellor explains the desire to use Facebook over traditional sources for grieving by students who have lost a friend. She is quoted as saying:
“What the Internet does for people is it allows, at any time or place that suits the person's emotional schedule, access to information and other people's feelings about something,” and that “it's a way people can move out of social isolation.”
A Rabbi who blogs about loss and dealing with it in his blog Windows & Doors says that Facebook is a popular channel for mourning because:
"Mourners can pour out their hearts on line to whoever is listening and there need not be any further exchange between them. They are bound by one thing and one thing only, a particular loss which they share".
On the other hand, on line is also acting as a de-sensitising tool that is making trauma most seen on Twitter. Dan Macsai notes in his article on Twitter and its effects on mourning that:
"rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the 'moral compass' of the brain to process."
He uses the example of how Michael Jackson's death brought with it a mass set of tweets -status updates- that desensitised the public before they could contemplate the ramifications of the news.
This can't be seen as how the whole of Twitter reacts to a death or news of a death but it does seem that with the functionality of Twitter -minimal characters and therefore 'to-the-point' updates- that tweeting about deaths is as Macsai says a "callous" form of informing others of a loss.
Whether we approve of the way we speak about death or mourn a loss on platforms like Twitter and Facebook the reality is that it is becoming a trend and popular channel to use. How this affects our pre-existing culture is that although in one way it allows everyone a space to mourn in their own way it also acts through tools like Twitter as a 'hard news' space that may affect our sensitivity to loss and grievance in turn.
