“You are Dead, but You are Not”: Social medium (Facebook) is the message in grieving and continuing bonds

Huey Pyng Tan

doi:10.21831/informasi.v50i2.18462

“You are Dead, but You are Not”: Social medium (Facebook) is the message in grieving and continuing bonds

Huey Pyng Tan, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia

10.21831/informasi.v50i2.18462

Abstract

Today, one may no longer alive but his social networking sites (SNS) account will still live on. Empirical studies on death and SNS started since 2004 covering issues on grief, bereavement, mourning, relational continuity functions of SNS, and digital legacy. Majority of them applied content and discourse analyses on SNS messages directed to or related to the deceased. Applying McLuhan’s aphorism medium is the message, researcher focused on the interplay among forms and functions of Facebook (FB) as a medium and message that mediates grief and the bereaved persons who are communicators that decided to grieve on FB. This research adopts grounded theory approach where in- depth interviews with 10 bereaved persons who maintain relational continuity with their deceased loved ones through FB were conducted. The conclusions are drawn to prove that bereaved users preferred to engage in a transcoporeal mediated communication with deceased for continuing bonds due to four main reasons – the deceased are perceived “dead but they are not”; maintaining relational continuity via FB is essential to “finish their unfinished business”; they felt aided and embraced when adopting “FB the Public Platform for Private Grief”, and they imagined a mutual communication based on “past experience and religious belief”. The mediated transcopereal communication (TcC) is enabled because the social medium (FB) is the message.

Keywords

Facebook, Medium is the Message, Grieving, Transcorporeal Communication, Continuing Bonds

Full Text:

PDF

References

Baker, S.E., Sedney, M.A., & Gross, E. (1992). Psychological tasks for bereaved children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 62(1), 105-116. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0079310

Barnes, S. (2006). A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States. First Monday. 11 (9). Retrieved from http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1394/1312

Bolden, L. A. (2007). A review of On Grief and Grieving: Finding the meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss. Counselling and Values, 51(3), 235-237. doi: 10.1002/j.2161-007X.2007.tb00081.x

Brubaker, J. R., & Vertesi, J. (2010). Death and the social network. Proc. CHI Workshop on Death and the Digital, 1-4.

Brubaker, J. R., Kivran-Swaine, F., Taber, L., & Hayes, G. R. (2012). Grief-stricken in a crowd: The language of bereavement and distress in social media. Proceeding of the Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 42-49.

Buckley, T., Sunari, D., Marshall, A., Bartrop, R., McKinley, S. & Tofler, G. (2012). Physiological correlates of bereavement and the impact of bereavement interventions. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 14(2), 129-139.

Carroll, B. & Landry, K. (2010). Logging on and letting out: Using online social networks to grieve and mourn. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 30 (5), 341-349. doi: 10.1177/0270467610380006

Corr, C. A, Nabe, C. M., & Corr, D. M. (1997). Death & dying--life & living. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing.

Crehan, G. (2004). The surviving sibling: The effects of sibling death in childhood. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 18(2), 202-219. doi: 10.1080/14749730410001700723

Davies, B. (1991). Responses of children to the death of a sibling. In D. Papadatou & C. Papadatos (Eds.), Children and death, Philadelphia, PA: Hemisphere.

DeGroot, J. (2009). Reconnecting with the dead via Facebook: Examining transcorperal communication as a way to maintain relationships. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Athens, OH: Ohio University.

DeGroot, J. (2012). Maintaining relational continuity with the deceased. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 65, 195-212. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/OM.65.3.c

Egnoto, M. J., Sirianni, J. M., Ortega, C. R., & Stefanone, M. (2014). Death on the digital landscape: A preliminary investigation into the grief process and motivations behind participation in the online memoriam. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 69 (3), 283-304. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/OM.69.3.d

Erikson, E. H. & Erikson, J. M. (1998). The life cycle completed (Extended version). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Falconer, K., Sachsenweger, M., Gobson, K., & Norman, H. (2011). Grieving in the Internet age. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 40(3), 79-88.

Friedman, R. & James, J. W. (2008). The myth of the stages of dying, death and grief. Sceptic, 14(2), 37-41.

Giaxoglou, K. (2015). ‘Everywhere I go, you’re going with me’: Time and space deixis as affective positioning resources in shared moments of digital mourning. Discourse, Context and Media, 9, 55-63. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2015.06.004

Hall, C. (2011). Beyond Kübler-Ross: Recent developments in our understanding. In Psych, 33(6).

Kandt, V. E. (1994). Adolescent bereavement: Turning a fragile time into acceptance and peace. School Counsellor, 41(3), 203-211.

Kasket, E. (2012). Being-towards-death in the digital age. Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 23(2), 249-261.

Kearl, M. C. (1989). Endings: A sociology of death and dying. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kern, R., Forman, A. E., & Gil-Equi, G. (2013). R.I.P.: Remain in perpetuity. Facebook memorial pages. Telematics and Informatics, 30, 2-10. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2012.03.002

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickmans, S. (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Leiner, B. M., Cerf, V. G., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., Postel, J., Roberts, L. G., & Wolff, S. (2012). Brief introduction of Internet [Brochure]. Reston, VA: Internet Society.

Malkinson , R. & Bar-Tur, L. (2005). Long term bereavement processes of older parents: The three phases of grief. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 50(2), 103-129.

Mash, H. B. H., Fullerton, C. S., & Ursano, R. J. (2013). Complicated grief and bereavement in young adults following close friend and sibling loss. Depression and Anxiety, 30, 1202-1210. doi: 10.1002/da.22068

Mitchell, L. M., Stephenson, P. H., Cadell, S., & MacDonald, M. E. (2012). Death and grief on-line: Virtual memorialization and changing concepts of childhood death and parental bereavement on the Internet. Health Sociological Review, 21 (4), 413-431. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5172/hesr.2012.21.4.413

Papadatou D. (1997) Training health professionals in caring for dying children and grieving families. Death Studies, 21, 575–600.

Pennington, N. (2013). You don’t de-friend the dead: An analysis of grief communication by college students through Facebook profiles. Death Studies, 37, 617-635. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2012.673536

Rando T.A. (ed.) (1986) Parental Loss of a Child. Champaign, IL: Research Press Co.

Roberts, P. (2004). The living and the dead: Community in the virtual cemetery. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49 (1), 57-76.

Roberts, P. (2006). From Myspace to our space: The functions of web memorials in bereavement. The Forum, 32 (4), 1-4.

Rubin, S. (1990). Death of the future: An outcome study of bereaved parents in Israel. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 20(4), 323-339.

Smartwood, R. M., McCarthy, V. P., Kuhne, J., Lee, H. K., & Ji, K. (2011). Surviving grief: An analysis of the exchange of hope in online grief communities. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 63, 161-181. doi: 10.2190/OM.63.2.d

Stroebe, M. S. (2009). Beyond the Broken Heart: Mental and Physical Health Consequences of Losing a Loved One. Utrecht: Utrecht University.

We Are Social (2018). Digital in 2018 in Southeast Asia Part 2 - South-East. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-in-southeast-asia-part-2-southeast-86866464

William, A. L. & Merten, M. J. (2009). Adolescents’ online social networking following the death of a peer. Journal of Adolescent Research, 24 (1), 67-90. doi: 10.1177/0743558408328440

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21831/informasi.v50i2.18462