Volume 13, No 1, 2016
Exploring attitudes to online grieving on Facebook through survey research
Eugenia Kuznetsova and Alexander Ronzhyn
Abstract
The research explores the process of grieving in an online environment, aiming to answer the question of how users perceive grieving practices on Facebook. The article is based on a survey of Facebook users, in which they estimate the importance of the topic and anonymously share their personal experiences related to death on Facebook. The survey aims to define how age, Facebook experience (frequency, motivations, number of friends) and also personality traits correlate with acceptance of different grieving practices in online context. Survey input left by the users with first-hand experience of death on Facebook shows the comforting effect of Facebook grieving after the loss of a valued person in the user’s life. At the same time, those users who did not have any emotional personal ties with the deceased or their relatives, tended to regard online grieving as superficial or disturbing experience.
Pages: 1-15
Keywords: Online grieving; Online memorial; Online mourning; Facebook; Death