By sharing our loss,we fight: Collective expressions of grief in the digital age

Digitalization of grief and the creation of online communities

Grief has been commonly defined as a universal response to loss that helps us to cope and adjust to the absence of someone or something in our lives (Piazza-Bonin et al., 2015). As such, it is an emotional state of pain deeply ingrained in our nature, socially expected when we experience a loss (Wool, 2020). While grief can carry a sense of vulnerability, it can either be a moving force or lead to the inability to cope and move on. Freud (2005) saw grief as a state of melancholia that does not allow one to “let go” and ends in destructive behaviors. Conversely, Butler (2003, 2004) believes that vulnerability in grief does not necessarily equate to powerlessness or passivity; instead, it can foster a sense of community by being extrapolated to others’ experiences, which can lead to reaching a state of empowerment and healing.

To reach the state described by Butler, the grieving process requires sharing one’s emotional pain with others, from which one can create communities and identity between its members. Digital technologies have provided people with tools to deal with this pain, allowing them to communicate their experiences with others, creating grieving communities to share their feelings and thoughts (Gamba, 2018). From blogs to social media, users have created and found spaces to tell their stories and read about others, looking to connect with the shared pain (Andersson, 2019). As a result, the digitalization of grief has moved the emotional process from the private to the public, becoming a mediated practice (Gibson, 2007).

For some time now, scholars have analyzed how grief is performed in these online contexts, as it provides new possibilities for communication and rituals that the non-online world does not facilitate (e.g., Brubaker et al., 2013; Eriksson Krutrök, 2021; Gamba, 2016, 2018; Lingel, 2013; Nansen et al., 2017). As Gamba (2016, 2018) mentions, there has been historical neglect of grief, as it is socially perceived as a waste of time that interrupts the expectations of social life, particularly in Western culture. The latter has resulted in public censure of emotions, which has even caused an unacknowledgment of grief in academic conversations. Nonetheless, some people have turned to expressing their pain in digital spaces, such as online cemeteries, virtual memorials, and social media, where creating connections, personalizing the process, and preserving the memory is easier. The basis of this expression of grief is what will allow for the development of mourning practices to process the pain and loss.

Among the descriptions of different platforms and the evolution of grief, the literature has focused on three main points about how online context contributes to creating online grieving communities: facilitating communication, aiding in the rationalization of grief, and enabling empowerment and meaning-making. Although these approaches primarily relate to the grief experienced after a death, they can also be applied to loss resulting from social injuries.

Regarding how these platforms facilitate the communication of feelings and emotions, current literature suggests that online spaces offer a mediated presence of the grievers, allowing them to connect with individuals across the globe who share similar emotions. What makes this interaction different is that it is no longer restricted to a specific time and space, which enables grief to transcend physical borders and connect people with weak ties in the offline world (Brubaker et al., 2013; Harju, 2015; Mitchell et al., 2012; Nansen et al., 2017). For example, online platforms have become an opportunity for individuals with parasocial relationships with the deceased or those affected by social harm. The emotion of this grief creates a connection between individuals living this one-sided relationship with the object or subject of the loss, creating an imagined community of grievers who do not necessarily know each other in real life (Medeiros and Makhashvili, 2022). Sanderson and Hope Cheong (2010) explored this community grief with the case of celebrities’ deaths, where they observed that participation on social media helped users to work through their pain instead of denying or rejecting it. Moreover, the possibility of grieving online facilitated this community building with different geographic, ethnic, and even religious backgrounds, who felt unified in the aim to propagate the celebrity’s legacy.

This mediated communication is aided by replicating rituals and elements in real-life grief, like pictures, writing of condolences, and speeches, which are presented digitally. However, as Nansen et al. (2017) and Lingel (2013) describe, the traditional conventions of grief are altered by the norms from digital platforms, mainly social media, leading to new protocols and practices. For instance, to share and express their grief with others, people take selfies, do live transmissions, and use hashtags to signify their feelings and communicate this critical and emotional event to the broader social network. Even though this implies a process in which new conventions and rituals are being created, online grieving could be questioned or invalidated by some users, as it simplifies the traditional and socially accepted way of grieving that involves in-person interactions. Additionally, some people may not have access to digital technologies or feel comfortable expressing their grief under these new protocols and practices, limiting who might participate in these instances.

In the case of the rationalization of death and loss, blogs and social media help users to create and read others’ narrations that allow for processing the pain. For example, Andersson (2019) examines this phenomenon in the context of cancer blogs to explore how users developed narratives to address death and share their stories. Through this approach, individuals can prepare for impending loss and find meaning in their emotions. This narrative strategy is also used in other social media platforms, where users can represent their emotions using digital resources more conducive to understanding their pain (Eriksson Krutrök, 2021). This dimension of digital grief suggests that blogs and other platforms can serve as existential terrains for reflecting on mortality and the challenge of finding words to talk about it. Using elements beyond verbal language (such as images, emojis, and sounds) can further facilitate pain processing. While this aspect of online grieving has not been thoroughly explored, it is worth noting that digital platforms offer new resources that enable more complex expressions of grief in the pursuit of processing the pain.

Finally, using digital platforms to share one’s grief with others and create communities can lead to agency and empowerment, which aids in the healing process (Al’Uqdah and Adomako, 2018; Walsh, 2020). As a result, grief can result in meaning-making, allowing individuals to reevaluate their self-identity and relationship with what was lost and move forward with renewed strength. This dimension could be particularly impactful in cases where the loss is related to a social injury, as the wound calls for reparations or action-making. In contrast, death-related grief may focus more on sense-making and understanding why the loss occurred. This element of meaning-making will be critical when analyzing the expression of this grief in mourning practices, as it can fuel activism and the development of social movements.

Mourning as a political act: memory creation and social justice in digital platforms

According to Woodward (1990), mourning is a complex and transformative experience that involves grief. As such, it consists of a set of rituals and behaviors that allow the expression of the pain caused by a loss, from which we can reevaluate our self-identity and reshape our future (Al’Uqdah and Adomako, 2018). However, as to what happens with grief, there are different perspectives regarding how the mourning process works to overcome pain and its effects on an individual’s identity. Freud (2005) believes mourning is a healthy response to loss, where the lost object can be replaced with a new one. However, when the mourning process is accomplished, we forget what was lost and do not acknowledge the effects the process could have on our identity.

Benjamin (1986) proposes an alternative view, where mourning does not require detachment from the past. Instead, the loss can have a creative quality that opens new possibilities and remains in an active relationship with history. Similarly, Butler (2003) also suggests that loss changes a person, and mourning involves a transformative experience with an uncertain outcome that cannot be predicted. This approach to mourning as a transformation that connects a person’s past and future relates with the idea of grief as meaning-making, as it can act as a moving force to look for change. Moreover, when this mourning moves to the public arena and is shared with others, it allows for agency and healing of the social injuries, not only to oneself but to the community who wants to see social changes. As a result, mourners can become social justice activists (Al’Uqdah and Adomako, 2018).

As mentioned, this essay approaches loss as a social injury related to eliminating or negating ideals, possibilities, or freedom. Therefore, the mourning that will be predominantly present has a political character. As Cheng (2001) explains, this mourning involves the mobilization and use of “ordinary citizens” pain as a political tool destined for achieving social changes. Thus, this public expression of pain has socio-political implications for marginalized communities, who can finally raise their voices and share their wounds. Similarly, Tafakori (2022) calls these expressions of grief oppositional mourning, in which the mourners seek justice from the entity or subject responsible for the loss (e.g., the State) and contest their power in deciding what is worth being grieved and what should be forgotten. This mourning implies the presence of hegemonic narratives that determine who can speak, who cannot, and whose voices are represented in the social discourses, conceiving this as a political act (Erwin, 2021; Vickers, 2008). Therefore, we can conceptualize mourning as a strategy for creating counter-narratives that challenge the unequal access to create storytelling, by which they make visible the social injustices that need to be changed.

Just like with grief, digital technologies and social platforms have made it possible to facilitate, enable, and co-construct mediated mourning practices. Many of these practices are translations of traditional offline rituals and norms, such as creating memorial sites and sharing memories (Sumiala, 2017; Wagner, 2018). However, the connectivity of the platforms has enabled a shift in how pain is expressed, as the communities of mourners can be more extended and test the space and time limits when communicating (Walter, 2015). Moreover, this digital extension of mourning gives massive visibility of the actions causing the pain, such as structural violence (Liebermann, 2021). These digital traits have created new symbolic practices and interactions that can connect users globally (Thimm and Nehls, 2017). Although some authors argue that each culture has its perspectives and norms on performing mourning (e.g., Wagner, 2018), these new symbols and ways of interacting encourage us to think about the possibility of creating rituals that could be, in a way, more universal.

One of the characteristics of mourning in online platforms is the ability to call for collective remembering and the construction of memory, particularly in how the image of the loss is represented. Harju (2015) notes that the interactions in digital platforms allow users to participate and engage in the expression of grief by facilitating the construction and negotiation of meanings that derive from the loss. As the author notes, participatory remembering generates collective memory, enabling mourners to assign a new identity to the lost subject or entity. Because this new meaning is created collectively, it should engage the community of mourners more deeply, allowing for the coordination of activist practices. For instance, when mourning is directed to disenfranchised grief, collective sharing, and meaning creation, it can transform into something that becomes socially accepted. Cao et al. (2022) also address this issue, highlighting how this new identity can represent the creation of counter-narratives to depart from the official ones and express their grief freely. This is particularly relevant when considering mourning cases that lead to digital protests, as activists create counter-narratives to challenge the hegemonic ones and inspire others to follow their cause.

Similarly, Papailias (2019) argues that digital mourning allows the democratization of grief, as it does not seek to reduce the meaning or significance of what is being mourned but instead encourages generative and recombinant expressions; and everybody can participate in the reassembling of the lost pieces to create new meanings. The author gives the example of the image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish refugee boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, which was widely shared on social media, making everybody witness his death. This mediated witnessing becomes an embodied practice in which the image ceases being observed by this global audience and instead becomes produced by it: it becomes collages on Instagram, videos on YouTube, and music, among other forms of expression. From this approach, we can interpret these users’ actions on social platforms as an active performance of mourning, contributing to creating this online collective memory. Although some of these creative interventions could be interpreted as an exploitation of the mourned subject or object, it is a mechanism by which people can appropriate the loss and make sense of it, giving it a significative meaning, which, when taken by social movements and activists, can lead to social transformations.

Digital mourning activism

The literature has documented social movements that emerged from a sense of loss and gained momentum through digital platforms. To observe and understand how digital mourning works and what strategies these groups use, I present three prominent case studies of mourning activism, each embracing a different type of loss in a different context.

The first is the Black Lives Matter movement, which, although it began with death, represents a fight against structural violence and racism directed toward Black people (Milstein, 2017). After the discharge of George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin in 20212, three female activists began the movement by using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter, which quickly gained mediatic attention. Interestingly, the movement was born in a digital environment before it ended in coordinated activist actions on the streets (Carmel, 2023). Thus, unlike other movements, it is decentralized, as anyone with internet access can participate, take action, and spread its message (Liebermann, 2021).

The movement describes its actions as a means of establishing room for Black creativity and originality (Black Lives Matter, n.d.), and as such, they configure social media as a place for developing activism based on the grieving for the injury of violence and racism. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram were used as a space for remembering their past and creating a shared vision, which became part of the collective national identity (Liebermann, 2021). Some strategies to carry this mourning relied on studying the icons and symbols activists used to reconstruct the images of individual victims with a larger victimized collective. Embodying the collective sense of victimhood, these symbols epitomized the movement dedicated to putting an end to police violence (Langa and Creswell, 2019).

However, there is a distinction the literature does not make regarding who is participating in creating this collective identity: the victims and the ones who identify in solidarity but are not victims themselves (e.g., rich whites). The latter raises the problem that online platforms could attract people who, despite their enthusiasm for becoming part of the movement, are part of the injury the movement tries to grieve. Rothberg (2019) recalls this issue and points out the necessity of not ostracizing these implicated subjects but making them accountable. For example, in Black Lives Matter, some people started using social media the slogan “I am not Trayvon Martin” or “We are all George Zimmerman” to establish a non-identification that, at the same time, looks to call attention to the violent acts and validate the victims as worthy of grieving.

The second case aligns with the digital origin of Black Lives Matter but differs regarding what is being mourned and its objectives. It corresponds to the social movement that emerged on microblogging after the death of Dr. Li, the doctor who raised the first concerns about COVID-19 and was silenced by the Chinese Government. After contracting the virus and passing away, people took over Dr. Li’s social media to comment and express their anger over the situation, using Li’s final post on Sina Weibo as a mourning site (Times, 2021). Even though the rupture moment that raises the movement is the death of a person, the actual loss is not the life but the hope for a better future implicated in that life (e.g., the prevention of the virus), which was taken away from the community.

Cao et al. (2022) analyze this case as an example of how mourning becomes a connective action that establishes a counter-narrative that challenges the official one (promoted by the Chinese Government) and aims to become a collective memory resource for future events. Their objective is to seek justice for Dr. Li, share personal experiences related to the pandemic, and advocate for civil rights. Ultimately, they hope to uphold justice and demand reparations for the inflicted pain. While the image of Dr. Li is central to the development of this first wave of digital activism, other social movements began to organize around the affective feelings of grief to create strategies to mourn their traumas, make meaning from the pandemic, and demand actions from authorities (Mackenzie, 2022). By collecting individual experiences, these groups called attention to health and medical institutions, biomedical systems, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Given the restriction from the Chinese Government to use some forms of social media, it is important to remark that online activist strategies remain susceptible to apprehensions, as authorities can shut down the platforms where communities are formed. The latter highlights a vulnerability of digital mourning activism, wherein the formation of a collective relies heavily on the existence of digital platforms. Consequently, it becomes essential to venture into offline realms, engaging in tangible actions beyond the digital sphere to transcend these limitations.

The final case revolves around the digital solidarities that emerged during the Arab Spring. Sumiala and Korpiola’s (2017) approach to the movement sheds light on how activists leveraged the imagery of martyrs on social media as powerful symbols representing the transformative changes they aspired to achieve. By doing so, they could articulate shared feelings of frustration and anger related to the injustices perpetrated by the ruling elite. Unlike the two previous cases, this movement began offline and transitioned to the digital realm, strategically aiming to reach a broader global audience.

The ruptures that precipitated the Arab Spring were rooted in economic stagnation, political corruption, and violence. Employing the figures of the martyrs served as a potent symbol of the injustices perpetuated by the authorities. The mourning, therefore, extended beyond the mere acknowledgment of death; it manifested a profound discontent with the ruling regime. By creating these symbols, the grieving community experiences a sense of distant suffering, which could potentially make them vulnerable. Intriguingly, the community must engage in witnessing practices, including sharing their stories on social media, to transform these figures into symbols. Once again, collective memory metamorphoses the original pain into a powerful impetus for action.

Concluding thoughts

Digital mourning has become a new way of expressing loss and grief in the digital age, but more importantly, it has allowed social movements to emerge using digital platforms. The three examples of mourning activism show the different types of loss and contexts in which mourning activism can occur and what are the implications for the social movements associated with it. Black Lives Matter leveraged digital platforms to oppose violence and racism against Black people, starting as a decentralized movement on social media and culminating in coordinated activism on the streets. Dr. Li’s COVID-19 death in China exemplifies how mourning can form a connective action that challenges official narratives and serves as a collective memory resource. The Arab Spring’s digital solidarity employed symbols to maintain visual representations of their objectives and inspire unity and action.

These examples demonstrate the growing significance of digital platforms as sites for collective mourning and highlight the potential for digital activism to shape public opinion, create counter-narratives, and bring social change. They also illustrate how social movements use digital spaces to process their pain, create community, and build collective memory. While these initial explorations provide a starting point for studying the implications of digital mourning activism, they also raise new questions about the role of such activism in creating a shared national or international identity and its ethical implications regarding the accountability and inclusion of diverse participants. Additionally, this area of research presents an opportunity to examine the potential impact of digital mourning movements on public policy and social change beyond the digital realm.

Overall, the digital mourning of loss in the online environment has been transformed into a new form of activism that aims to construct a collective identity, seek justice and reparations, and demand actions from authorities. However, it is critical to recall that digital mourning activism is vulnerable to the existence of digital platforms and the authorities’ potential restriction to access them. As such, it raises the question of what challenges online collectives face when promoting and sustaining digital mourning activism and how to overcome them. The revised examples show that perhaps activism requires the transgression of digital actions to the offline world to transcend, but these challenges still need to be studied.