MOURNING IN THE FEED: FACEBOOK AS A DIGITAL GRAVEYARD AND THE EMOTIONAL POLITICS OF ONLINE MEMORIALIZATION

Abstract

Social media has altered the way people go about mourning in that they can now “grieve, recall, and pay tribute in environments that are persistently online.” This paper examines the “digital graveyard” of Facebook in Lahore, Pakistan, and what the experience of mourning in the “feed” is like, where “memories pop up at random moments and where personal grief is partially public.” Using in-depth interviews of 25 participants, the paper discovers that there are three interrelated patterns in the “experience of mourning in the ‘feed’ realm of the ‘digital graveyard’ of Facebook in Lahore, Pakistan,” and that these patterns reveal “the combinations of emotional experiences that mourning in the ‘feed’ brings.” Participants in the study found the creation of memorial “posts and pages” that were “both consoling and painful.” While they provided “connection and support for the bereaved and the feeling that the departed is ‘socially present,’ they were also “sources of intensified grief that ‘keeps grief ‘alive’ by continuously bringing the departed ‘alive’ in the ‘feed.’ These interviews also point towards the ethical issues related to the aspects of privacy and consent, authenticity, and the uneasy realization that grief can be used as content that can be liked, shared, and even monetized. However, the results of the study point towards the aspect that Facebook memorialization isn’t only a therapeutic practice or negative but can instead be emotionally complex and culturally nuanced. This paper proposes the need for a more culturally attuned, complex approach to digital grief that takes into consideration the coexistence of offline traditions with the new ones related to Pakistan’s transformed griefscape.