The temporal logic of media practices: Mourning and the tooling of time on Facebook

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of temporal logic to theorize how users engage with time as part of their media practices. Analyzing 40 cases of mourning and memorialization practices across Facebook’s Profiles, Groups, and Pages, the study identifies three core components: a twofold engagement with time (calendric and discursive), temporal introspection, and temporal convergence. The calendric use of time involves specific dates that serve as temporal triggers for posting, while the discursive use describes how users embed time into their posts—through rich and repeated time expressions, poetic narration, and so on. Time becomes a communicative resource, not merely a contextual background but an active rhetorical and affective tool. Temporal introspection captures how social media platforms invite users to articulate their inner experience of time, and temporal convergence reveals how multiple temporal layers—personal and collective, offline and online—converge on a single platform, giving rise to new rituals and expressions.

Keywords

Discourse analysis Facebook media practices memorialization mourning qualitative research social media temporality time

Introduction

Since Harold Innis’ (2008 [1951]) work on the relations between time, space, and the media, communication scholars perceive time as a fundamental component that shapes and distinguishes different forms of communication. At the same time, media technologies themselves play a fundamental role in structuring, shaping, and organizing time and temporal experiences. On the individual level, media technologies such as personal cameras, diaries, and calendars have long helped people track time and remember important details and events (Kaun and Stiernstedt, 2014). On a macro level, the calendar and the clock have reinforced the general mode of production in modern society (Peters, 2013), while the radio and television have established the collective memory of societies and created a “common public time” (Scannell, 2014).

In recent years, scholars have turned their attention to new media technologies and their temporal implications, at the forefront of which are social media platforms. This article intends to contribute to this growing body of literature by theorizing what I call the temporal logic of media practices. A central premise of the article is that media practices are not random. Users may not follow a fixed or commonly shared schedule for posting or live streaming, yet they arrange their media practices according to a certain logic that is temporal in nature. In this process, users’ temporal relations with media are multi-layered and involve techno-commercial infrastructures, political-cultural institutions, and social practices (Poell, 2020). The aim of this article is to shed light on these complex dynamics by proposing the concept of temporal logic, which comprises three central arguments. The first is that users engage with time as an integral part of their media use, and this engagement is twofold: calendric and discursive. It is calendric in the sense that certain dates function as temporal triggers for media practices, such as posting. It is discursive in that users highlight and reflect on time within their posts—emphasizing dates, articulating their experience of time, and often using it as a poetic device to add emotional resonance or authenticity. Time, in this sense, is not merely background information but a salient motif and communicative tool.

The second argument concerns temporal introspection. I suggest that social media platforms not only encourage users to document and curate various life experiences but also invite them to reflect on time itself—to examine how they feel in relation to time and articulate it in their posts. While previous research has noted the role of social media in fostering self-reflection, this article focuses specifically on users’ introspective engagement with temporality—the inner experience of time.

The third argument introduces the idea of temporal convergence. I argue that the temporal logic of media practices involves multiple temporal layers that ultimately converge on a single platform. In this article, I identify four such layers: biographical time (e.g. birthdays, anniversaries), national time, religious or cultural time, and platform time—a digital temporal layer generated by the platform itself (such as Facebook’s “Friendiversary” feature). These different time layers—spanning online and offline, private and collective domains—are expressed and experienced in and through a single platform.

To illustrate these claims, I analyze 40 cases of mourning and memorialization on Facebook, drawing from three sub-platforms: Profiles, Groups, and Pages (cf. Navon and Noy, 2023a). The following sections review key area of literature on media and temporality, paying particular attention to social media platforms and mourning temporalities. I then present the methodological framework and outline the study’s findings and conclusions.

Time, temporality, and the media

Before delving into the relationship between time, temporality, and the media, it is worth clarifying the distinction between the terms time and temporality. According to Hoy (2009), time refers to the natural world, while temporality is the time of human existence. Time is thus often viewed as objective, fixed, linear, and universal, whereas temporality is subjective, fluid, contextual, and shaped by cultural, social, or emotional factors. For the purpose of this article, I use the terms time and temporality interchangeably, yet my approach treats time as subjective and experiential (cf. Van Dijk, 2009). Moreover, my approach to time is a practice-centered approach that, in the words of Jenkins (2002), views time as “something that humans do.” This perspective foregrounds the relations between practices and temporality and examines the questions: How do people do time? And how do they do time through digital means or within digital environments?

In the essay “Making Time in Digital Societies”—which opens a special issue on the topic in New Media & Society—Lohmeier et al. (2020) reflect on various conceptualizations of time and media. One line of thought argues that media technologies provide the very infrastructure through which we organize our political, public, and everyday lives, so much so that “our media experiences are fundamentally about time” (p. 1522). Time and temporal experiences are integrated into the business model of media technologies, and scholars have argued that digital technologies, in effect, establish new temporal perceptions (Jorge et al., 2022) and new temporal regimes (Lohmeier et al., 2020).

Within these new temporal regimes, the dominant temporal orientation is toward the present. The “fixation with the present” (Miller, 2011: 191) is essential to the temporal existence of digital media, especially in social media platforms, where it is integral to their logic and embedded in their structural affordances. The constant stream of new posts prioritizes recency over retrospection while pushing “old” content out of sight (Keightley, 2012; Page, 2010). Even when platforms do facilitate forms of retrospection—such as the Facebook Memories feature—they still follow the logic of presentness and newness. These features aim to generate new content, interactions, and engagement, rather than simply recalling the past (Humphreys, 2020; Kaun, 2016).

A useful way of thinking about temporality—as dynamic and multifaceted rather than a strict dichotomy of past, present, and future—is the notion of right-time, proposed by Bucher (2020) to describe the temporality of algorithmic media. Algorithmic media rely on the analysis of users’ behavior, preferences, and interactions. Through feedback loops and machine-learning techniques, they aim to achieve personalization and meet users’ expectations as effectively as possible. The right time is, therefore, the time that best matches users’ expectations. It is tailored to each user and re-tailored continuously. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter incorporate real-time and newness according to relevance, but in this new temporal regime, “the now is never enough” (Bucher, 2020: 1711).

A further concept within the temporal regimes of digital technologies is that of temporal patterns, which describe how media content grows and fades over time (Park et al., 2023; Yang and Leskovec, 2011). While several studies examined how online content changes over time, the question I am interested in is the very beginning of this process—namely, when content first appears. From a practice-centered perspective, the central question becomes: When do media practices take place? What prompts users to create and publish posts at particular times and on specific dates?

Poell (2020) argues that users do not organize the temporal aspects of their media practices entirely freely; rather, they do so in relation to political-cultural institutions and the techno-commercial infrastructures of media platforms. This relational approach resonates with Sharma’s (2014) notion of power-chronography, which conceptualizes temporality as an “awareness of power relations as they play out in time” (p. 4). These power relations are multiple and interdependent. Accordingly, Sharma emphasizes the need for a methodology that attends to the micropolitical, embodied technologies and techniques that synchronize them. My analysis supports these perspectives, showing how the timing and temporal logic of media practices are shaped by entangled power relations of media infrastructures and social institutions.

Temporal layers

A shared insight in recent scholarship on time and media is the recognition of multiple temporalities. Kaun and Stiernstedt (2014) conceptualize time as multiple and hybrid in nature and point to the “multiplicity of temporal layers” on social media platforms like Facebook. In their case study, these layers include user time, Facebook time, and DT64 time (the commemorative page analyzed). Similarly, Niemeyer and Keightley (2020) outline a list of temporal layers, including the historical time of popular culture, the synchronic time of social media communication, the dialogic time of the Facebook timeline, and users’ autobiographical time. Carmi (2020), in her study of deviant media, examines media power and shows how Facebook captures “all the temporalities of people’s actions within and outside its territory” (p. 205). Poell (2020) likewise argues that social media—like all media—“do not have an inherent temporality, but engender a multiplicity of temporalities” (p. 610).

These temporalities emerge not only from media infrastructure and affordances but also from users’ discursive practices. In his study of museum visitor books, Noy (2018) shows how users index multiple timeframes to situate their visit in time. These timeframes include mythical, religious, and national temporalities, or any other “special occasions that they judge to be relevant to their acts of visiting” (p. 31). Noy terms this indexing of collective times re-timing and points to the additional indexing of biographical moments in ways that intertwine visitors’ personal biographies with the national timeline. “Writing on commenting platforms supplies an occasion to bring these temporalities together and to align the individual with religious and national chronotopes” (p. 32). In doing so, visitors in effect position themselves within temporal frameworks which they find relevant for themselves. The practice of re-timing, then, is a discursive strategy through which users-visitors (re)arrange temporalities on display. Preziosi (2009) reflects on different senses of time and the fusion between historical time—understood as sequence and succession—and time as a syntactical relationship between “present” and “past.” Noy (2018), following Preziosi, concludes, “Time here is not so much a duration as it is an aspect” (p. 28), and I would add: a tool, employed to establish a relationship between different timeframes and to position visitors in relation to them.

In a similar vein, Giaxoglou (2015) studied sharing practices on Facebook and identified time and space deixis as affective positioning resources that help users organize their personal and social experience. She highlights these deixis as communicative practices and interactional resources. “Time and place is not just background material used to anchor tellings,” she writes, “but rather [. . .] interactional resources allowing positionings at multiple levels” (p. 57). From this perspective, temporal layers are both a discursive strategy and a communicative practice: a tool employed by users to structure meaning, and an analytical tool used by scholars to understand relations and interactions in texts.

Mourning temporalities and the media

The structuring of time and temporality is closely tied to the mnemonic functions of media. Indeed, some useful tools and conceptual frameworks in the literature on time and temporality have emerged from research on memory and memorialization. For example, the tool of Re-timing mentioned earlier is derived from Noy’s (2018) study on museum memory media and the discourse of remembering, and the concept of social media time, developed by Kaun and Stiernstedt (2014), is based on an analysis of a Facebook memorial Page. The authors define media memory practices as “memories exercised in, through, and by the media” (p. 1158), and argue that “analyzing a commemorative page offers multiple entry points to temporal affordances, on the one hand, and temporal experiences, on the other” (p. 1158). In this light, mourning posts are more than expressions of grief—they are also rich sites and discourses for exploring temporality and temporal logic.

Various studies have examined mourning practices on social media platforms, highlighting the significant role these platforms play in the experience of individual users and in the shifting social norms surrounding mourning and memorialization (Carroll and Landry, 2010; Eriksson Krutrök, 2021; Giaxoglou and Döveling, 2018; Gibbs et al., 2015; Morse, 2020). Brubaker et al. (2013) identify three forms of expansion that social network sites enable in the context of mourning: temporal expansion, spatial expansion, and social expansion. The temporal expansion is made possible by the asynchronous nature of social media communication, their frequency of use, and their archival capacity. The authors suggest two major implications of the temporal expansion: first, an increase in both the immediacy and breadth of information available, as users share details about the death and memorial services and continue to add content over time. Second, temporal expansion enables the interweaving of death and grieving into the everyday, “rather than in the temporally bound settings of traditional funerals and memorials” (p. 160).

The expansions and implications proposed by Brubaker et al. (2013) are valuable and constructive. Yet it is important to note that mourning practices on social media are not blended into the everyday in a random manner—they enact temporal settings, or temporal logics, of their own. While they are no longer confined to the settings of traditional services and events, they are very much affected by these temporalities, as I will detail in the findings section.

Method

The dataset for this study consists of 40 cases, each defined as an account or distinct entity within Facebook—either a Profile, Group, or Page—rather than an individual post or isolated situation. The sample includes 15 Profiles, 10 Groups, and 15 Pages, in order to obtain as diverse a dataset as possible. This reflects the sub-platforms approach (Navon and Noy, 2023a), which identifies distinct social spheres within the same platform: Profiles are personal accounts belonging to private individuals; Groups are platform-based hubs that facilitate interaction among multiple users, typically around shared interests; and Pages are public channels intended for public figures, organizations, or businesses to establish a digital presence and engage with audiences. Sampling cases from three sub-platforms thus enriches the dataset and allows for a comparative perspective (Navon and Noy, 2023a: 2900), in line with the long-standing principles of data triangulation in qualitative research (Denzin, 1978; Patton, 1999).

The sampling procedure involved Facebook searches using keywords and phrases related to mourning and memorialization, followed by random sampling from the search results and a final selection of 40 cases, in accordance with the purposeful sampling approach (Patton, 2002). The sample includes 23 men and 20 women (three cases involve more than one deceased person—for example, a male and female spouse), ranging in age from 14 to 86 (average age: 36). Causes of death in the sample vary widely and include road accidents, natural disasters, murder, suicide, medical issues, military service, old age, and more. In seven cases (17.5%), the cause of death was not mentioned. Religious background and ethnicity were also taken into consideration in order to build as diverse a dataset as possible. However, it is important to note that while the sample reflects a range of religious observance—from secular to traditional and religiously observant individuals—it does not represent significant ethnic diversity. The vast majority of cases involve Jewish individuals, with one case involving a Druze deceased.¹ The original language of all posts is Hebrew, and the quoted examples in the article were translated by the author.

Over the course of approximately 3 years (from June 2018 to March 2021), I conducted ethnographic fieldwork based on the principles of digital ethnography as outlined by Varis (2020). A critical issue in digital ethnography that Varis addresses concerns context and contextualization. She views context as an interactional achievement and asserts that it must be investigated rather than assumed: “A ‘log’ of communication only serves as ethnographic data if it is understood in its context” (Varis, 2020, p. 57).

Varis (2020) further notes several layers of context, including digital affordances and online-offline dynamics—which I considered in my analysis—and emphasizes the need to attend to further layers of context. Inspired by this line of thinking, I suggest seeing time and temporal logic as a major contextual layer. To examine how users situate and contextualize their mourning and memorialization posts in relation to time and media, I applied discourse analysis and focused on three discursive strategies—analytical heuristic tools—outlined by Noy (2018): Establishing Addressivity, Re-citing, and Re-timing.

These tools were not applied as rigid coding categories, but rather adopted as sensitizing concepts that guided my interpretive lens. Addressivity entails attention to whom the communication is directed. These structures signal participation, interaction, and self-positioning—especially relevant in mediated environments where audiences must be actively addressed or imagined. Re-citing involves recalling and reproducing segments of popular discourse in situ, often as a way of anchoring posts within shared cultural scripts. Re-timing refers to the indexing of collective temporalities—such as national, religious, or cultural chronotopes——in ways that interweave them with the individual and personal experience.

Following a practice-centered approach, I conceptualize posting itself as a media practice that comprises both a temporal and a discursive aspect. The calendric aspect refers to the timing of the post, while the discursive aspect refers to the language users employ. Importantly, I treat users’ discursive choices—what they choose to write, how they frame time, and how they narrate loss—not as separate from the media practice, but as integral to it. This approach aligns with perspectives in digital ethnography and discourse studies that recognize discursive acts as socially situated media practices (e.g. Giaxoglou, 2015; Noy, 2018; Varis, 2020).

In terms of research ethics, the data observed in all three sub-platforms were publicly accessible—either because Pages are public by default or due to the privacy settings of the Groups and Profiles included in the sample. In their scoping review of 40 empirical studies on digital mourning, Myles et al. (2019) argue that “terrain accessibility constitutes a determining factor” in ethical decision-making, including the use of anonymization (p. 293). Nonetheless, I anonymized all names by using initials only. Furthermore, all quotes were translated from Hebrew, which means they cannot be located via search engines or traced back to specific users.

Findings

The three dimensions of temporal logic

Findings reveal three dimensions, or three analytical components, of the temporal logic of media practices. The first dimension concerns the twofold way users engage with time as part of their media practices: calendric and discursive. The calendric use of time means that certain dates act as temporal triggers and invite media practices. In this study, calendric engagement refers specifically to posting on mourning-related dates. These dates include not only publicly recognized dates with national, cultural, or religious significance, but also deeply personal dates that do not appear in public calendars and yet carry substantial meaning for the individual user. Drawing on Bucher’s (2020) notion of “right-time,” algorithmic media can easily detect patterns in user activity and identify significant dates as triggers for engagement. However, understanding the temporal logic behind a post—what makes a specific date meaningful for the user and why they choose to post on that date—requires a more careful analysis of the user’s discourse and its surrounding context.

The discursive use of time refers to the ways in which users embed and construct time into their posts. This is achieved through a richness of time-related expressions, a repeated use of temporal markers (e.g. at the beginning of each sentence), detailed descriptions of emotional states in relation to time, or a visual representation of the date. Time thus serves as a discursive tool to add sentiment, poetic tone, narration, or a sense of authenticity to the post. It provides a context and, often, a kind of justification for posting—particularly when the date is meaningful only to the bereaved individual.

The second dimension concerns temporal introspection. I propose the term temporal introspection to describe the way users reflect on their inner experience of time, examine how they feel in relation to time, and articulate it in their posts. In other words, it is the choice to assess their mourning experiences through the lens of time. Throughout the Findings, I analyze representative examples to illustrate how temporal introspection operates across different temporal layers.

The third dimension is temporal convergence—that is, the convergence of multiple time layers across online and offline, private and collective domains, as mediated through a single platform. Findings reveal a series of dates on which users post mourning-related content. As the ethnographic fieldwork was long-term and included access to retrospective data published before June 2018 (when my research began), it was possible to confirm that these dates are consistent and recur annually. The dates observed in my findings reflect different temporal layers or timeframes (Noy, 2018), including biographical time, national time, religious or cultural time, and platform time. In the following sections, I outline these layers and salient temporalities they include, along with representative examples of users’ posts that demonstrate the three dimensions discussed above.

Biographical time

Death anniversary

The death anniversary emerges as a particularly significant and visible date in users’ mourning activity across all three sub-platforms. However, subtle differences can be observed between these sub-platforms, reflecting and reinforcing the conceptual framework of mourning practices on Facebook proposed by Navon and Noy (2023a). According to this framework, Profiles gradually evolve into personal mourning logs in which users share their experience of loss, thoughts, and feelings—often in expressive and emotive language (cf. Jakobson, 1988 [1960]). An example of this can be seen in the following post, published by Y.A on his Profile on the anniversary of his father’s death:

Example 1 [Y.A, July 13, 2017]

“My father died two years ago. In a few minutes, we’ll head to the memorial. The air at the Ofakim cemetery will be dry and hot. I had a few important meetings this morning, but I couldn’t focus. Because of the heat, and because of this death that won’t let go. [. . .] There was a man in the world. A man I loved. And he’s already been gone for two years.”

In this example, the temporal expression marking how long has passed since the death (2 years) appears both at the beginning and end of the post, forming a kind of framing structure. This framing (“My father died two years ago/And he’s already been gone for two years”) emphasizes the meaning the author attributes to time and its central role in this posting practice. The opening temporal phrase is more factual/informative (“My father died two years ago”), but as the post progresses, the tone gradually shifts from logistical details (the upcoming memorial, the location, the weather, work meetings) to emotive communication and introspection (“couldn’t focus,” “death that won’t let go,” “a man I loved”). Thus, although the closing sentence repeats the same information about the passage of time, its tone is different. The word “already” signals the subjective relationship to the time that has passed, while the phrase “he’s gone” replaces the dry factual wording (“died”) and emphasizes the father’s absence as experienced by the bereaved user. The writing is emotive and even poetic (cf. Jakobson’s communicative functions, 1988 [1960]), and the discursive use of time contributes significantly to the poetic tone of the post, linking the user’s emotional state to the chronology of mourning—thereby creating a personal mourning log.

Another example of users’ explicit use of time as a means of adding poetic structure, narration, and dramatization can be seen in the following post:

Example 2 [S.O, February 11, 2022]

February 11 . . . [. . .] and the heart stops beating.

Then the funeral and the Shiva—which is a whole journey on its own.

Then, a year without you.

Day after day, morning after morning, night after night.

Memorial.

[. . .]

A whole year has gone by.

12 months.

52 Friday night dinners.

Purim, Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Hanukkah, first candle, second candle, third candle, fourth candle, fifth candle, sixth candle, seventh candle, eighth candle.²

And there’s still so much ahead of us—without her.

This post was published on February 11, and even though Facebook provides a timestamp for each post, the user chooses to open the post by explicitly stating the date herself. For her, Facebook’s timestamp is insufficient. This underscores that for users, time is not just metadata for indexing purposes—it is central to the practice itself. The temporal logic guides the user and shapes her post.

Beyond the death anniversary, the post is clearly saturated with additional temporal expressions. The user breaks down the units of time that comprise the year of mourning: “one year” becomes “day after day,” which then becomes “morning after morning, night after night.” The enumeration of months, Shabbat dinners, and holidays (which are similarly deconstructed, as Hanukkah is broken down into eight separate candles) shows a discursive and strategic use of time to convey the experience of mourning and the prolonged emotional endurance it entails—past and future (“there’s still so much ahead of us—without her”). In other words, users narrate their personal stories through the lens of time, engaging in what I call temporal introspection. Time serves not only as a trigger and starting point for posting, but also as a discursive and poetic tool.

In Groups and Pages, posts published on the death anniversary often mention the memorial event itself. Users update group members (e.g. “The anniversary of my mother’s death is approaching. As every year, we will hold a memorial hike on the first weekend of May. Please save the date.”) or use Pages to invite the general public to open memorial events (cf. Navon and Noy, 2023b). Either way, the dominant communicative function is more conative—focused on the addressee and prompting action—rather than emotive or introspective (cf. Jakobson, 1988 [1960]).

Birthdays

Another significant date under the category of biographical time is the birthday of the deceased—and, somewhat unexpectedly, also the birthday of the bereaved. On the deceased’s birthday, users take the opportunity to reflect on the time that has passed and seems, in a way, to have “frozen” for the person who died. Posts on this date typically revolve around feelings of grief and loss over another year the deceased did not live to experience or celebrate, and the absence of an opportunity to communicate with the deceased and to mark their birthday in joyful and familiar ways. Consider the following examples:

Example 3 [V.L, June 17, 2012]

In 40 minutes, I was supposed to call you and shout in your ear, “Happy birthday! You finally made it to 25, no more young driver insurance!”

But instead, I’ll call your phone and it won’t be available, and then I’ll send a text and won’t get a reply. [. . .] And the most painful and frightening part is that this is how it will always be, we won’t sing you birthday songs and you won’t blow out candles [. . .] Sending you from here a thousand kisses and hugs and so much love.

Example 4 [H.G, November 5, 2014]

5.11—Birthday.

This symbolic day has suddenly changed its meaning.

How do you go through such a day without color, without taste?

How do you mark such a day without well-wishes, without blessings, without thinking about what to buy and how to celebrate?

After many hours of thought, it feels right to me to mark this day.

From now on, and every year, I will mark the day you were born—the day the world was blessed with you.

In both examples, we see references to means of communication that are no longer possible—phone calls, SMS messages, buying a gift—customary social practices that became irrelevant after the death. Beyond the communicative function of emotional sharing, these references also serve to explain or justify the act of posting. In the absence of any other way to communicate with the deceased or celebrate the birthday in customary ways, users turn to Facebook and publish a post. The media practice of posting on Facebook thus becomes more legitimate or understandable. In Example 5, the user even shares her intention to do this every year, making the ritualization process apparent and explicit.

Time plays a significant role as users seek to “mark the day” and establish a new ritual, a digital ritual, to enact this temporal marker— “from now on, and every year.” These representative examples clearly illustrate that the ritualization process of new media practices is not spontaneous or coincidental, but rather a deliberate and reflective act that users employ “after many hours of thought.”

Finally, we once again see how users choose to write the date at the beginning of the post, regardless of the timestamp automatically provided by Facebook. The short phrase (“5.11—Birthday”) highlights the temporal logic guiding the user and reflects the understanding that time is not merely informational background, but an important interactional resource—a central component in anchoring the media practice.

On the birthdays of bereaved users, most posts revolve around memories of past birthdays, shared experiences with the deceased, and the difficulty of celebrating in their absence. For example,

I don’t want to celebrate without you. I don’t want anyone to buy me anything, [. . .] When will they stop asking what I want for my birthday and what I’m missing? Isn’t it obvious? You answer them for me . . . I just want my dad!.

Some users express a birthday wish related to the deceased: “My birthday wish is that you find the peace you deserve . . .,” or “This year, my wish is to become everything my mother dreamed I’d be [. . .] ,” while others ask for the deceased’s blessing, imagining them as watching over from above.

A particularly interesting finding relates to the birthday reminders the platform sends to users. According to Facebook’s affordances, when a deceased user’s account is memorialized, it is removed from the automatic reminder system. However, in cases where the user has died but their account has not been memorialized, birthday reminders continue to appear even after their passing. Living users do not remain indifferent to these platform-generated reminders, and their responses vary widely: some are painful, others welcome the opportunity to share a memory (Example 5), and some are overtly sarcastic (Example 6).

Example 5 [I.S.A, October 9, 2017]

Facebook reminded me of this event. I knew it would remind me. I even waited for it.

My mother’s birthday—exactly a year ago.

The post popped up when I opened the computer and then suddenly disappeared, but it touched me so much that I searched for it and shared it.

I had already prepared new photos, but these ones are very powerful to me.

These photos are from my mother’s birthday last year when she turned 86.

[. . .] This year, on this day, my mother would have turned 87.

I can’t wish her a happy birthday today, but I can honor the fact that she was born.

Example 6 [P.L, July 11, 2017]

This morning Facebook reminded me that it’s your birthday today, as if I needed a reminder. It even alerted me not to miss the opportunity to wish you a happy birthday.

I really wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity, and I wish I could say “happy birthday” and celebrate with you—but I can’t.

You will always be 22, and there are no more birthdays for you. . .

Both posts are reflective and explicitly address the user’s experience with the platform. The bereaved users draw on Facebook’s affordances—specifically, birthday reminders—as a legitimate starting point for their posts. In the first example, the user anticipated the reminder and presents it in a positive light. She shares that she had already prepared photos in advance, indicating that she had planned to post at this date and had prepared for it ahead of time. Ultimately, she found the photos suggested by Facebook more fitting and chose to use them instead. Facebook thus helped her complete the task more effectively. The platform’s mediation is perceived by the user as helpful, and she welcomes it—describing how she waited for the reminder and how deeply it moved her, so deeply that she actively searched for it once it disappeared and then shared it. In the second example, however, the user’s stance toward the platform is strikingly different. She expresses sarcasm and defiance. She doesn’t need Facebook to remember the important occasion—she remembers it herself, and the reminder only frustrates her. Facebook’s approach is perceived by her as authoritative, and she interprets the platform’s prompt not as a suggestion but as a warning. From this perspective, Facebook’s mediation is seen as an intrusion rather than assistance.

Either way, in both examples the users explicitly state that they were aware of the timing and had considered the temporal logic and its meaning. At the same time, Facebook is portrayed as an active participant in the timing and formation of media practices and rituals within the platform. As we will see later, Facebook is not only active in reminding users of birthdays, but also generative in producing dates of its own.

National time

Memorial day

Since seven of the cases in my sample relate to fallen soldiers, it is not surprising that Israel’s national Memorial Day emerges as a date of significance—one of the temporal triggers for users’ mourning activity. Here too, users engage with time both calendrically and discursively. They emphasize its importance and demonstrate a clear connection—an underlying temporal logic—between the timing and their media practice of posting. Consider the following example:

Example 7 [H.C, April 18, 2018]

Memorial Day is approaching

but for us, every day is remembrance

There’s not a day we don’t say your name

Days and nights, our thoughts are with you

The choice to open the post with the words “Memorial Day is approaching” reaffirms that users view time as a tool for positioning and use it to provide explanation or justification for the act of posting. The temporal reference provides a reason, perhaps an answer to an implicit question: what prompts the user to share a sad—or somewhat revealing—post? In this case, beyond offering justification and social legitimacy, there is also a positioning of the personal mourning narrative as part of a larger, national, and collective story.

In the following line, the user declares: “For us, every day is remembrance.” Yet, despite this claim, she doesn’t post every day. National time offers her social legitimacy to publish a post on this particular day, even though her personal mourning, as she notes, is felt daily. Paradoxically, the statement “for us, every day is remembrance,” which appears to downplay the significance of Memorial Day, actually underscores its importance. It is precisely this calendric occasion that enables and encourages her to act—to post, to communicate her grief and remembrance to others.

In and through the platform, she engages in temporal introspection, reflecting on how she feels in relation to time and, in a sense, assessing her mourning experience through the lens of time: “There’s not a day we don’t say your name. Days and nights, our thoughts are with you.” As this shows, the post is saturated with temporal references, each line marking time in some way: Memorial Day, every day, not a day, days and nights. Time is a dominant motif and a tool, used to add sentiment, authenticity, and narrative texture.

Interestingly, references to national time and Memorial Day appear not only in cases where the deceased was a fallen soldier, but also in instances of private mourning, when the cause of death is more ordinary, such as illness. A clear example can be found in the following post:

Example 8 [O.H, April 22, 2015]

Today we visited Dad’s grave.

And even though he isn’t an IDF casualty, and we’re not considered a bereaved military family,

the pain is the same pain. The loss is the same loss. It’s still the same death that cannot be grasped [. . .] Every year, this is the saddest day. Tens of thousands who were killed for me, for us, for the homeland. [. . .]

This year, I understand these words. Bereavement. Loss. Pain. Grief. Death. A hole.

[. . .]

And time? Time doesn’t ease. It doesn’t heal. It only highlights the absence, the empty bed and the abandoned chair.

In this post, the user draws on the calendric occasion of Memorial Day and uses it as a starting point for her post, even though her late father was not a fallen soldier, and his story is not formally part of the national narrative. She makes this clear from the outset (“he isn’t an IDF casualty”) but immediately expresses solidarity and draws a connection between her own mourning and nationally framed mourning. “The pain is the same pain. The loss is the same loss,” she writes, emphasizing that only now, following the loss of her father, she truly understands the meaning of those words.

The poetic style of her writing is evident in the rhythmic sequence of words —“Loss. Pain. Grief. Death. A hole.”—each separated by a period, as if to create a rhythmic flow in the reading of the text. Here too, the post is saturated with temporal references (“today,” “every year,” “this is the day,” “this year . . .”) in each line. Toward the end of the post, the reference to time becomes even more direct and explicit as she asks: “And time?” and proceeds to answer, offering her personal stance on time. For her, time neither eases nor heals. Instead, it highlights the absence. Like the empty bed and chair she mentions in the post, specific temporal points emphasize the loss and make it more visible. This effectively illustrates the concept of temporal introspection: the user reflects on her experience of time—how she feels about it, how she feels at a specific point in time, and what a particular date means to her, both this year and every year. It is an inward self-reflection through the lens of time.

Religious or cultural time

Another temporal layer that emerges from the findings involves mourning-related dates in the Jewish tradition—for example, the Shiva and the Shloshim (a week-long and 30-day period following the burial, respectively)—as well as various Jewish holidays throughout the year. Posting around these dates is common even among non-religious or observing users, where the reference to time is not necessarily spiritual or religious, but rather cultural or social. Values such as heritage, tradition, and family—central to Israeli culture—are clearly expressed during these times through symbols, conventions, and customs.

One such custom is the empty chair, which echoes the empty bed and chair mentioned in Example 8 above. According to the tradition, on the Passover Seder night, one chair is left empty at the table for the prophet Elijah. According to some beliefs, Elijah joins the Seder as an invisible guest. Today, many Jews leave an empty chair at the table—not necessarily out of belief that Elijah is present, but as a symbol of expectation and preservation of intergenerational custom. This custom, among others, serves users in their mourning posts as they harness religious or cultural time for rhetorical purposes. This can be seen in the following example:

Example 9 [Remembering O—In memory of O.M, April 6, 2015]

The Seder night has passed. The extra chair we placed for you remained empty.. because you didn’t come this year.

We were surrounded by many people, supportive and loving.. but we were alone, without you.. one missing person feels like an entire world gone.

Exactly a year ago [. . .] you sat in the corner [. . .] “O., whoever sits in the corner doesn’t get married for seven years.”

[. . .] I insisted and made you switch seats, for me. Because I wanted you to get married [. . .] But fate had other plans.. and this year, you didn’t even sit in the corner.

They say you shouldn’t be sad on the holiday—we’re sad on the holiday, and all the time.

Here too, the temporal logic is prominent, appearing both at the beginning and the end of the post (“The Seder night has passed” / “the holiday”). The user draws on time as a starting point, using it to explain her decision to publish a post on the Page. Alongside the calendric aspect, which relates to the timing of the media practice, the discursive dimension is equally evident: time also shapes the practice itself—what the user is doing, in the text, in the words. Time creates an organizing framework for the post, with temporal logic at both the opening and the ending, and additional time expressions interwoven throughout (“this year,” “exactly a year ago,” “seven years,” and again “this year”). These illustrate the user’s temporal introspection and the way she reflects on her emotions and experiences through the lens of time: what happened last year, what is happening this year, and what is happening “all the time.”

The empty chair custom serves the user to underscore and express the absence of the deceased while creating a connection to time—specifically, cultural time—through symbols and customs, whether traditional or religious. The use of symbols as rhetorical devices recurs throughout the findings and takes different forms across various holidays. Consider, for example, the following post, published during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah:

Example 10 [Remembering T.N and Smiling, December 10, 2015]

Another Hanukkah candle

We’re all together, and yet you’re still not with us . . .

The flames pierce straight into the eyes.

Tears fall, and the heart burns from within.

A spark of hope that a miracle will happen and you’ll come back to us.

But reality strikes

Our light

has gone out forever.

In this example, the user harnesses the imagery of Hanukkah—the Jewish holiday of lights—embedding metaphors such as “the heart burns from within” and “a spark of hope” into the post. The candle flames are described in dramatic terms as piercing the tear-filled eyes of the bereaved user. The religious time and the ritual of candle lighting serve as a trigger for an emotional experience and, naturally, for the media practice of posting. The hope, framed in the spirit of the holiday as a spark, is that “a miracle will happen and you’ll come back to us.” In doing so, the user echoes the Hanukkah blessing that speaks of “the miracles performed for our ancestors in days of old, at this season” (the wording of the blessing). The miracle she longs to see is the return of the deceased, whom she likens in the following line to an extinguished light, ending with the temporal expression “forever.” Thus, this is a clear instance of time and holiday symbols being used rhetorically and poetically—the user draws on the date and its associated imagery to heighten the emotional tone of the post and add dramatic effect.

Platform time

This final category refers to dates that originate within the platform and have no meaning offline; they do not appear in any calendar and have no offline reference or context. In other words, these are digital-based dates generated by the media platform. For example, as part of Facebook’s Memories feature, users are sometimes presented with a pop-up message upon logging in that reads: “[Account holder’s name], we care about you and the memories you share here. We thought you’d like to look back on this post from X years ago.”

The choice of when and which content to present to users is, of course, not random. Facebook is well aware that this is one of its most personal features, and that its management must be “extremely caring and sensitive” (D’Onfro, 2016). Nevertheless, the display of content involving deceased individuals is nearly unavoidable, especially in cases where the deceased were not Facebook users or their accounts were not memorialized. Facebook retrieves photos and text posts from the digital archive, reminding living users of their deceased loved ones at times that are seemingly random, that is, on dates that are neither pre-determined nor associated with any offline event.

Similarly, Facebook’s Friendiversary feature remains active even in cases involving a deceased friend. As part of this feature, users are presented with a celebratory message encouraging them to share a special video or a curated selection of photos compiled by Facebook to mark the anniversary of their friendship with the deceased. This date recurs annually and is thus a platform-generated occasion, unrelated to collective significant dates or to the user’s biographical time. These digital dates have no formal or external existence beyond the platform. Nevertheless, a digital ritual often develops around this occasion, or at the very least, user engagement and response to the platform’s notification. The following example presents the response of a bereaved user to a Friendiversary message she received from Facebook, marking 5 years of friendship with her late mother.

Example 11 [S.Y, February 2, 2018]

I wake up to a morning where Facebook informs me that five years ago we became friends on Facebook, and that it hopes I’m enjoying this friendship..

This is what I have left now, photos and memories, Facebook reminders that jolt my heart every single time [. . .] So, in response to Zucki’s question—there were 34 wonderful years of the privilege of being her “friend,” the most precious friend I could have asked for, my first and truest love [A full heart emoji] [A broken heart emoji]

As in previous examples, this relatively short post is also rich in temporal expressions: morning, 5 years, now, every single time, 34 years. The second time expression (5 years) marks the duration of the virtual friendship with the mother on the platform. However, based on the user’s account, it becomes clear that Facebook lacks important information about the nature of the relationship and the offline reality: this is not a standard friendship but a mother–daughter relationship, and the mother is no longer alive. The fourth temporal expression (every single time) highlights the repetitive nature of such reminders. These digital reminders join a wider array of memory tools—analog (photos) and cognitive (memories)—positioning Facebook as a new agent of memory, whether to the delight or dismay of its users. The digital media platform thus becomes an active participant in the production of new occasions, rituals, and practices that are structured by temporal logic, converge multiple temporal layers, and encourage temporal introspection.

Conclusion

This article proposed the concept of temporal logic to theorize how users engage with time as part of their media practices. Drawing from 40 cases of mourning and memorialization practices across Facebook’s Profiles, Groups, and Pages, the study identified three core components of this logic: a twofold engagement with time, temporal introspection, and temporal convergence.

First, the findings show that users engage with time in both calendric and discursive ways. Calendric use involves specific dates that serve as temporal triggers for posting. These dates include not only culturally shared occasions but also deeply personal ones that hold meaning only for the bereaved. Discursive use refers to how users embed time into their posts—through the repetition of time expressions, poetic narration, and visual representations. Time thus becomes a communicative resource, not merely a contextual background but an active rhetorical and affective tool.

Second, the concept of temporal introspection captures how users reflect on their feelings and experiences through the lens of time. Social media platforms not only provide affordances for documenting and curating life experiences but also invite users to articulate their inner experience of time—how it passes, stands still, or intensifies emotions such as grief and longing.

Finally, the study introduces temporal convergence as a third component of temporal logic. Users draw from multiple temporal layers—biographical, national, religious/cultural, and platform-generated—and bring them together through their digital practices. Facebook becomes a site where offline and online, personal and collective temporalities converge, giving rise to new rituals and expressions.

Together, these findings suggest that media practices and mourning practices on social media in particular are not temporally random or incidental. Rather, they are organized according to a temporal logic that users actively negotiate. By foregrounding time as a central analytical lens, this study contributes to media and communication scholarship and deepens our understanding of how people “do time” on digital platforms, and how platforms, in turn, “do time,” set occasions, and shape the temporal experience of users.

While this study provides a focused examination of mourning practices on Facebook, its scope is limited to one platform, one linguistic and cultural context, and a relatively specific set of cases. Future research could examine how temporal logic operates across a wider range of contexts and media practices, extending beyond mourning and memorialization, and spanning different platforms and cultural settings. Such work could further illuminate the role of time in shaping digital communication and practices, as well as the role of platforms in structuring temporal experience.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Prof. Chaim Noy for his generous guidance during the early stages of this study. With insight and encouragement, he helped me recognize the analytical potential of temporality in the data and urged me to develop this line of inquiry. I also thank him for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. I am grateful to the Editor-in-Chief and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and for facilitating a productive review process.

Data availability statement

I confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available upon request.

Ethical approval and informed consent statements

This study was conducted in accordance with institutional guidelines and did not require formal ethical approval.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sarit Navon

Notes

Author biography

Sarit Navon (PhD, Bar-Ilan University) is a lecturer in the School of Communication at the Peres Academic Center, Rehovot, Israel. Her research focuses on the intersections of media affordances, platform structures, discourse, and social interactions.

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