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Virtual Mourning and Memory Construction on Facebook

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Virtual Mourning and Memory Construction on Facebook BSTXXX10.1177/0270467613516753McEwen and ScheafferBulletin of Science, Technology & Society 516753research-article2013 McEwen and Scheaffer Article Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 2013, Vol 33(3-4) 64 –75 Virtual Mourning and Memory © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Construction on Facebook: Here Are the DOI: 10.1177/0270467613516753 Terms of Use bst.sagepub.com Rhonda N. McEwen1 and Kathleen Scheaffer2 Abstract This article investigates the online information practices of persons grieving and mourning via Facebook. It examines how, or whether, these practices and Facebook’s terms of use policies have implications for the bereaved and/or the memory of the deceased. To explore these questions, we compared traditional publicly recorded asynchronous modes of grieving (i.e., obituaries) with Facebook’s asynchronous features (i.e., pages, photos, messages, profiles, comments). Additionally, by applying observational techniques to Facebook memorial pages and Facebook profiles, conducting a survey, and interviewing respondents as a follow-up to the survey, we examined the benefits of and issues surrounding online information sharing via Facebook when coping with the loss of another. We found that the immediacy of publishing comments, messages, wall posts, and photos provides Facebook mourners with a quick outlet for their emotions and a means of timely group support; however, these actions directly affect the online curation of the deceased’s self and memory and also create an environment of competition among mourners. The aforementioned benefits and complications of using Facebook during bereavement are shaped by the policies outlined by the social media platform. Keywords online information practices, mourning, grief, moral rights, self-curation, memory, Facebook, social media Introduction Landry, 2010). Now, before we have time to turn on the radio, flip on the television, or open the newspaper, we are For a growing number of the world’s literate population, the notified of a death by Facebook (Carroll & Landry, 2010; rise of social media brings new channels for personal and Levack, 2008; Stone, 2010). collective expression, as well as new spaces for narrating The rise in mobile media use worldwide has also contrib- identities. However, a decade following their introduction, uted to the surge in active participation on social media sites. social media sites remain locales of contestation, where the Access to the mobile Internet is reshaping how we think rules of engagement and policies are still in formation and about information sharing, and the uptake of data services on reformation. Today, with approximately 1.11 billion users mobile media—including the rise of wireless fidelity (WiFi) worldwide (GlobalWebIndex, May 2, 2013), Facebook is the hotspots in public spaces—is transforming when and how most used online platform for social connection and the con- people engage with social media. No longer is the desktop struction of a digital identity (Alexa: The Web Information the only place that information is exchanged; increasingly, it Company, 2013). While other online sites are also used for is shared via our mobile phones, wherever we are (Lenhart, grieving and mourning death, we chose Facebook as our site Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010; Rainie & Wellman, 2012). for analysis because its early establishment as a social media Public spaces are grounds for contestations of what consti- venue and its large user base make Facebook a virtual global tutes appropriate and ethical social behavior both online and locale for commemoration, bereavement, and public expres- off-line, and the rules of engagement are still being defined sion of emotion, rich with personal, social, and cultural arti- (Ling & McEwen, 2010; McEwen & Scheaffer, 2012). This facts to study (Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Brubaker, Hayes, & Dourish, 2013; Carroll & Landry, 2010; Falconer, Gibson, 1University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada Norman, & Sachsenweger, 2011; Getty et al., 2011; Hogan & 2 University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Quan-Haase, 2010; Vicary & Fraley, 2010). Prior to the advent of social networking sites, newspaper obituaries, Corresponding Author: radio announcements, television programs, phone calls, Rhonda N. McEwen, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road North, e-mail, and text messages were the main modes of notifica- CCT Building, Room 3005, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 1C6. tion of someone’s death (Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Carroll & Email: [email protected] McEwen and Scheaffer 65 leads to a pervasive sense that social networking sites are platform to represent one’s self. Identity via Facebook is omnipresent. constructed by users when they add content to their profiles. This article is an analysis of the nature of the everyday Such content includes sending and accepting friend requests work undertaken to produce, manage, and, in some cases, (“friending”), liking pages, adding photos, tagging one’s self unintentionally erode digital identities and memory archives. and others in photos, writing photo captions, adding infor- Since Facebook is a dominant, global site with multigenera- mation in the “About” section, posting statuses, making wall tional and increasingly older users (PiperJaffray & Co, posts, generating comments, and uploading videos. A user’s 2013), we focus on it for our analysis of the context of activity on pages and profiles where he or she is not the bereavement and the limitations of its terms of use policies, administrator also contributes to the construction of the and we explore the tensions at play between the collective user’s online identity, for as Van House and Churchill (2008) construction of individual digital identities/memory and a argue, “What is remembered individually and collectively deceased individual’s self-curation. depends in part on technologies of memory and the associ- ated socio-technical practices” (p. 296). Thus, unlike a per- Grief and/or Mourning Defined sonal web page, a Facebook page comprises not only the content created or edited by the administrator but also the After being informed of a death, Westerners traditionally contribution of others to the profile, through the addition of gather in public venues to mourn—at wakes, memorials, or comments, photos, videos, and like; this latter content also funerals. For those who are unable to attend the event physi- builds the online reputation and persona. Facebook’s features cally, Facebook users reinterpret and repackage memorials have defined the platform as a social space for the develop- online; thus, Facebook becomes a social space for continual ment of a collective online memory and digital archive for mourning and grieving support—or does it (Brubaker et al., the individual, thus perpetuating a culture of interdependent 2013; Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Getty et al., 2011)? connectivity (DeGroot, 2008; Getty et al., 2011; Kern, Throughout this article, grief and mourning are placed Forman, & Gil-Egui, 2013; van Dijck, 2012). within the context of bereavement. Grover and Fowler’s (2011) definitions of “mourning” and “grief” are used: Since the self is a “collaborative manufacture” between “Mourning is the external part of loss. It is the action we performer and audience, authorization must be a collective act. take, the rituals and customs. Grief is the internal part of loss, Individuals cannot be the sole arbiters of their online identity. how we feel” (p. 9). Facebook users mourn online to remem- (Davis, Seider, & Gardner, 2008, p. 1086) ber a loved one who has passed away, to connect with the deceased’s community of friends, to honor the life lived by In this highly articulated process, it becomes necessary the deceased, and to receive support from and give support to for interacting individuals to seek consensus regarding the other Facebook users (Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Carroll & parameters of authorization. As part of these consensus- Landry, 2010; Getty et al., 2011; Hogan & Quan-Haase, building processes, Facebook users continually verify the 2010; Stone, 2010). self-presentations of others through feedback, which takes In this article, we use Goffman’s (1959) notion of front the forms of “liking” a comment, photo, video, or status, and stage and backstage to contextualize Facebook members’ by contributing evidence in the form of text, photos, videos, online actions. Front-stage performance, the actions each of or links. However, in spite of the social nature of online iden- us perform in a public sphere for public consumption, is tity management processes, individual Facebook users take extended to online mourning via Facebook (e.g., construct- personal ownership of the sum of these interactions as repre- ing memorial pages, memorializing profiles, tagging photos, sented by their edited or unedited profile. Fowler (2005) adding photos and videos, composing photo and video cap- states that “collective representation can exist through the tions, as well as posting comments and status updates). On medium of individual interaction, but they are socially situ- the other hand, backstage performance, the private aware- ated and are thus ‘social facts’” (p. 54). Although created and ness and personal performance—in this case, the internal maintained by a collective in a process of social construc- grief of a user—is acted out in private via Facebook (e.g., tion, this digital
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