“Memories in the iCloud”: How does digital mourning transform traditional Chinese death memories?—A virtual ethnography based on China’s personal online mourning

Participants and procedure

This study employs a combined methodology of virtual ethnography and semi-structured interviews. Virtual ethnography allows for immersive, participatory observation within the “digital field sites” (Dalsgaard, 2016) where mourning practices are enacted on social media. This method is crucial for tracing how individuals construct private, personalized commemorative spaces and negotiate their sustained participation within them. Complementarily, semi-structured interviews are employed to elicit rich, nuanced data on public perceptions and subjective understandings of digital mourning. This approach facilitates an analysis of how this emergent form mediates, challenges, or transforms traditional frameworks of death memory and ritual practice.

Virtual ethnography serves as a crucial entry point for the researcher to access the field of study. First, the subjects of this research and the issues they raise occur on WeChat, one of the most widely used social media platforms among the Chinese public. Existing research has already established that Facebook possesses the conditions to function as a mature research field, facilitating researchers’ adoption of multiple roles and identities while reducing certain structural barriers encountered during the research process (Piacenti et al., 2014). First, WeChat in contemporary China has evolved beyond a mere social platform to become a comprehensive digital infrastructure, deeply embedded in the domains of finance, mobility, and everyday sociality. This pervasive integration makes it an indispensable medium for public engagement, establishing it as a primary field site—analogous to Facebook in other contexts—for studying digitally mediated social practices. Second, the platform’s architecture fosters open, participatory spaces that facilitate the construction of digital mourning realms. These realms serve as sites where participants simultaneously perpetuate traditional ritual logics and generate novel forms of death memory through digital interaction. The rich, user-generated tapestry of text, images, and videos within these spaces provides critical empirical material for analysis. Finally, commemorative mourning is an intrinsically experiential, prolonged, and agentive social process. Its nuances resist reduction to quantitative metrics, necessitating a methodological approach capable of capturing depth and context. Virtual ethnography, therefore, is strategically employed to gain embodied access to this field. Through sustained observation and participatory engagement, it enables the collection of thick descriptive data and cultivates an interpretive understanding of the research problem.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in conjunction with virtual ethnography to supplement data on Chinese public participation in digital mourning practices. Building upon participatory observation, these interviews employed a first-person perspective to gather participants’ personal experiences, reflections, and insights—particularly regarding how this participatory behavior influenced their views on death and their memories of the deceased. The first interviewee was recruited online by the researcher during the virtual ethnography phase. Researchers proactively identify users matching the specified research criteria during participatory observation. In order to ensure the comprehensiveness and authenticity of the information provided, researchers first conduct a month-long observation of the individuals concerned (primarily assessing whether they frequently engage in digital mourning on the platform, with a minimum selection criterion of accessing the “iCloud Mourning” at least three times per week). Eligible users are then invited to participate, on the condition that they have substantial experience with digital mourning practices. Additional participants were recruited partly through methods consistent with the first participant and partly via existing researcher referrals. Regardless of recruitment method, all interviewees were explicitly informed of the interview’s purpose, content, and intended use of the data prior to participation, with full respect for their informed consent. To protect personal privacy, all participants’ identities were concealed, and interviews were conducted through a combination of in-person and online formats. Depending on participant preference, each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Instruments and data analysis

This study investigates digital mourning practices on WeChat, with a focused analysis of the prominent platform “iCloud Mourning” (Yunshang Sinian). The selection of this case is based on its significant user adoption and interactive density, which render it a pertinent site for examining the mainstreaming of digital commemoration.

First, in contrast to previous collective digital mourning for public figures on social media—such as collective commemorations on National Memorial Day or for celebrities—iCloud Mourning is a personalized digital mourning platform designed to offer individuals a convenient, digital way to commemorate and remember departed loved ones. The establishment of a WeChat subscription account and mini-program results in its integration within the WeChat social media platform, thereby conferring benefits such as privacy, social connectivity, and accessibility to the general public. Users have the option of logging into their personal digital mourning space using self-created accounts and passwords or, alternatively, inviting WeChat friends to join. The mourning process is unconstrained by time, space, or traditional death-mourning rituals and remains free from external interference. The platform has achieved a high level of popularity among the Chinese public by striking a balance between personal privacy and the needs of those who have lost a loved one. Its scale is evidenced by a user base exceeding 5 million, the creation of over 5 million digital mourning halls, and more than 43.2 million user-generated tributes (Yunshang Sinian, 2025).

Second, “iCloud Mourning” employs a participatory model centered on free mourning hall construction and customizable scene recreation. Users are able to access the digital mourning halls they have created for their deceased loved ones, where they can express their remembrance through various methods. These include leaving messages for the deceased or the performance of mourning rituals on their behalf by their “digital avatars” (including traditional gestures such as bowing, kneeling, and the offering of joss sticks). Users can also actively participate in mourning activities by purchasing digital offerings (including joss sticks, joss paper, fruits, tobacco, and alcohol—items commonly used in traditional death rituals) and adjusting the layout of their mourning (with some background designs requiring a paid purchase). This approach facilitates a space for civilized public mourning while maintaining the platform’s normal operations.

Third, the platform’s core activity is the digital mediation of “memorialization”—the foundational affective schema of traditional Chinese death culture. The demographic of users encompasses young people who are unable to visit the graves of their loved ones due to professional and familial commitments, as well as elderly individuals who experience physical limitations yet report profound yearning for their deceased relatives. Some individuals seek solace for recent losses, while others honor long-passed loved ones through remembrance. The “iCloud Mourning” platform brings diverse groups together to honor departed loved ones. This initiative not only honors the deceased but also blends traditional Chinese mourning sentiments with a new form of remembrance enabled by digital media.

Researchers recruited 55 interviewees, comprising 24 males and 31 females. All participants had engaged in “digital mourning” on the “iCloud Mourning” for over 3 months (see Table 1). The interviews aimed to explore Chinese users’ personal experiences, perceptions, and feelings regarding participation in online digital mourning, with particular focus on how such engagement influences their views on death and death-related memories. The interviews primarily covered three dimensions: participants’ basic personal information, their perceptions of death and death memories, and the effects of engaging in digital mourning activities on these perceptions and memories. Respondents shared their motivations for participating in digital mourning and the personal impacts of this behavior (see Table 2). Approximately 467,500 Chinese characters were collected through in-depth interviews. The collected text was coded and analyzed using NVivo 20 software, with the entire analysis process completed within approximately 2 months (see Table 3).

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Table 1.

Participants.

No.	Gender	Age	Relationship with the deceased	Registration time for the digital mourning platform
DM01	Male	35	Mother	11 months
DM02	Male	46	Father	8 months
DM03	Female	43	Father and uncle	5 months
DM04	Male	37	Father	17 months
DM05	Male	33	Grandfather	13 months
DM06	Male	52	Mother	6 months
DM07	Male	45	Father and mother	9 months
DM08	Female	53	Father	14 months
DM09	Male	56	Father, mother, and grandfather	23 months
DM10	Male	37	Mother and uncle	14 months
DM11	Female	32	Grandfather	5 months
DM12	Male	37	Mother	8 months
DM13	Male	52	Mother	12 months
DM14	Male	57	Mother	17 months
DM15	Male	46	Grandfather and uncle	16 months
DM16	Female	49	Mother	13 months
DM17	Female	38	Grandfather and grandmother	12 months
DM18	Female	36	Mother	7 months
DM19	Female	44	Father	3 months
DM20	Female	47	Grandfather and grandmother	6 months
DM21	Female	49	Father and mother	16 months
DM22	Male	46	Grandmother and father	12 months
DM23	Female	48	Mother	9 months
DM24	Male	35	Father and mother	7 months
DM25	Male	37	Uncle	4 months
DM26	Male	47	Father	9 months
DM27	Female	53	Mother	21 months
DM28	Male	56	Mother	13 months
DM29	Female	52	Father and mother	6 months
DM30	Male	38	Father	9 months
DM31	Female	45	Grandfather and grandmother	12 months
DM32	Male	33	Uncle	17 months
DM33	Male	59	Grandfather, father, and mother	23 months
DM34	Female	60	Father and mother	3 months
DM35	Male	34	Father	6 months
DM36	Female	33	Grandfather and grandmother	5 months
DM37	Female	45	Uncle	7 months
DM38	Female	28	Grandfather and grandmother	5 months
DM39	Female	27	Grandmother	3 months
DM40	Female	34	Grandfather and grandmother	6 months
DM41	Female	33	Mother	7 months
DM42	Male	47	Father and grandfather	12 months
DM43	Male	49	Mother	9 months
DM44	Female	34	Uncle	14 months
DM45	Female	33	Father	3 months
DM46	Female	47	Father	6 months
DM47	Male	46	Mother	9 months
DM48	Female	43	Father	6 months
DM49	Female	37	Father	5 months
DM50	Female	39	Father	4 months
DM51	Female	34	Father, grandfather, and grandmother	6 months
DM52	Female	54	Father	12 months
DM53	Female	57	Father and mother	9 months
DM54	Female	54	Mother	12 months
DM55	Female	51	Father and mother	7 months

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Table 2.

Semi-structured interview question outline.

Question category	Problem example
Basic information	Participant’s profile (age, occupation, registration time for digital mourning platform, etc.)
Participation in digital mourning	How did you first come across the digital mourning platform?
	How do you commemorate deceased loved ones through digital platforms?
	What are your thoughts on digital mourning?
	How should we view the relationship between digital mourning and traditional Chinese mourning?
The Impact of digital mourning on traditional Chinese death memories	Before and after participating in digital mourning, has your perception of death and your memories of death changed?
	Do you believe that long-term digital mourning can influence traditional Chinese death memories? (Including both positive and negative impacts)
	Do you think digital mourning can become a driving force for transforming death memories in China?

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Table 3.

Coding categories.

Level 1 coding categories	Level 2 coding categories
Digital mourning space	Tomb, place of mourning, memorial hall, home in “another world”
Digital mourning ceremony	Mourning supplies: incense, candles, paper money, funeral attire, wreaths, etc.
	Mourning rituals: kneeling rites, incense offerings, hierarchical rites for relatives, etc.
	Mourning personnel: immediate family, extended family, friends, colleagues, etc.
Digital mourning emotions	Mourning periods: first 7 days, seventh 7 days, 100 days, 1 year, and 3 years (counted from the date of passing)
	Mourning spaces: tombs, family ancestral temples, and home memorial tablets
	Mourning activities: collective mourning, family mourning, and individual mourning

Virtual ethnography was conducted on the “iCloud Mourning” platform over an 8-month period (November 2024–June 2025). The research design comprised two interconnected phases of engagement. Initially, the researcher performed platform immersion, registering an account to experientially engage with its operational logic and the digitization of ritual practices. This firsthand engagement facilitated a comparative understanding of the continuities and disjunctures between digital and traditional mourning, forming a foundational comprehension of the platform’s sociotechnical ecosystem. Subsequently, the researcher shifted to a mode of observant participation. This involved systematically browsing publicly accessible digital mourning halls created by users, analyzing the architectural and symbolic construction of digital gravesites, and basic ritual performances. Concurrently, during in-depth interviews, researchers—with participants’ consent—observed participants personally accessing the digital mourning they had registered for deceased loved ones on the “iCloud Mourning.” This allowed direct observation of digital tomb creation and mourning practices, supplemented by context-specific follow-up questions. A total of 12 participants were recruited. All virtual ethnographic research on the “iCloud Mourning” adheres to the guidelines published on the AOIR Ethics page: “Ethics Guidelines for Internet Research 3.0.”

Creating “digital tombs”: The spatial production of digital mourning extends and reshapes traditional Chinese death memories

Traditional Chinese death mourning, understood as a socially constructed process (Brussel and Carpentier, 2012), is characterized by stringent spatial orders and institutionalized rituals. The tomb, as its core locus, must conform to geomancy (Feng Shui) principles such as “harbouring wind and gathering energy” and remain ontologically tied to commemorative practice. This binds memory to specific, material lieux de mémoire (Alavez and Caquard, 2023), forming a fixed spatial foundation for collective remembrance. Consequently, the act of visiting the gravesite of the deceased to pay respects has emerged as the physical medium of traditional Chinese mourning practices, constituting the fundamental means for the Chinese public to express their remembrance of the departed. However, rapid urbanization since the 1980s has precipitated a spatial rupture. As millions migrated to concrete metropolises, the foundational link—where the living commune with the deceased at physical tombs—was severed. While migration spatially dislocated traditional commemoration, the enduring cultural schema of “viewing life through death” (He, 2024) ensured that the imperative to remember not only persisted but also was often intensified, fuelling a search for alternative commemorative forms. Research suggests that the rapid popularity of “iCloud Mourning” among the Chinese public stems primarily from their ability to digitally bridge the temporal and spatial barriers that prevent people from visiting gravesites to pay respects. This digital approach has been shown to resolve the conflict with fast-paced urban lifestyles, thereby eliminating the constraints of traditional Chinese mourning practices, which are rooted in fixed physical spaces. Consequently, the constraints imposed by physical locations have been rendered obsolete in terms of hindering the living from mourning the deceased.

Research indicates that digital tombs, as the principal spatial vessels for death memory on these platforms, constitute a co-constructed artifact shaped by shared recognition between platform architectures and user agency. Within the “iCloud Mourning” platform, the process begins with users creating “digital tombs” for the deceased. While this digital construction dispenses with traditional geospatial logics (e.g. feng shui and auspicious timing), it introduces a new protocol for personalization. The platform’s design offers a menu of symbolic choices, allowing users to curate a contextualized mourning space. This includes selecting a tomb background informed by personal preference or the deceased’s cosmological elements (e.g. Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth—Five Elements), inscribing a biographical epitaph on the virtual tombstone, and choosing tomb specifications and virtual offerings—options that are often tiered and commodified, reflecting both relational intimacy and economic transaction (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Digital tomb created by the user for the deceased on the “iCloud Mourning” (Yunshang Sinian).

Although rationally speaking, the living’s mourning for the departed is not directly tied to the scale of tombs or the variety of ritual offerings, the hierarchical culture of death formed under Confucian influence in feudal China has subtly conditioned Chinese people to accept material and monetary constructs as the space of the deceased, viewing them as an extension of the departed’s earthly power. Thus, even as mourning practices migrate from physical spaces to cyberspace, this traditional disciplinary framework of death memory remains fundamentally unchanged. Tradition has not vanished; it has merely undergone a digital transformation in its modes of expression (Sapalo, 2024):

It’s been a long time since I returned to my hometown to tend to my deceased parents’ graves. Even when they were alive, I rarely visited them due to work commitments and didn’t show them enough care. Now, on the “iCloud Mournin,” platform, I’ve “buil,” a digital tomb for them using only the finest materials. This is my way of making amends . . . (Content cut from DM07 interview transcript)

Research reveals that among all users participating in digital mourning, some are extremely wealthy while others barely make ends meet. Yet when it comes to building “digital tombs” for the deceased, none consider spending money “unnecessary.” In this dialogue between life and death, the “digital tombs” constructed with money represent not only the living’s remembrance of the departed but also a form of self-comfort for the bereaved. Rather than being a form of compensation from the living to the deceased, it is more accurately a form of compensation from the living to themselves. After all, in the living’s mourning of the dead, only money can make their thoughts and emotions tangible. Beyond that, the living can do nothing and are powerless to do anything else.

The “digital tomb” operates through a dual logic of transposition and transcendence. It mediates and extends traditional tomb-building logics into cyberspace while simultaneously emancipating mourning practices from the constraints of physical geography. This shift enables a participatory reconstitution of commemorative space.

First, the advent of digital technologies has enabled the Chinese populace to construct and engage in spaces for the commemoration of the deceased in an autonomous manner. In the context of digital platforms such as “iCloud Mourning,” users have the capacity to establish mourning halls for departed loved ones, thereby creating permanent digital commemorative spaces. The occurrence and conclusion of mourning activities may transpire at any temporal juncture, unencumbered by the ideological and spiritual constraints imposed by traditional cultural and social norms that govern death rituals. This “virtual presence” approach has the potential to compress time and space, thereby disrupting the conventional reliance on simultaneous, co-located mourning. It has been demonstrated that this reconfigures the temporal and spatial constraints that are inherent in China’s traditional death rituals, thereby effectively alleviating the limitations imposed by physical distance and travel conflicts in modern urban life. This innovation achieves a balance between the cross-regional, fast-paced lifestyles of urban populations navigating modernization and the practical need to honor departed loved ones.

Second, the architecture of these digital spaces facilitates a scalable sociality of remembrance. While serving as a site for individual reflection, they are designed to be shared—via invitations or requests—with kin and friends, thereby reinforcing and digitally mapping the deceased’s intimate social network. Digital mourning provides accessible tools for emotional expression, including virtual flowers and condolence messages, thereby enabling fragmented, real-time participation. This is a particularly salient issue for those unable to attend in person due to time constraints and serves to alleviate any feelings of guilt that may be experienced by these individuals. The concept of dispersed relatives and friends forming a digital mourning community has been posited as a means of perpetuating the continuity of death memories.

This transformation of online spaces into enduring repositories for commemorating the deceased while preserving familial and social bonds is a significant development. This dual liberation—from fixed geography to fluid digitality and from prescribed ritual to personalized practice—constitutes a significant cultural recalibration for a public long accustomed to hierarchical mourning structures. By centering autonomous participation, digital mourning advances the modernization of ritual practice. Moreover, it subtly sustains emotional continuity and collective memory through digitally mediated ceremoniality (Giaxoglou et al., 2017; Harju, 2014):

I remember how complicated it was to visit family graves when I was young. Not only did we have to walk a long way to the cemetery, but we also had to check the auspicious time before setting out and perform ancestral rites. And because I was a girl, they wouldn’t let me go alone—I had to accompany an elder . . . Nowadays, I rarely have time to visit either. So I created a digital tomb based on my memories of the ancestral graves. Whenever I miss my family, I can pay my respects anytime—it fulfills a small wish of mine. Mainly, it’s incredibly convenient, free from all those cumbersome formalities. (Content cut from DM17 interview transcript)

The digital tomb, as a space for mourning the dead, decentralizes the authority of death commemoration from society and clan to the individual, transforming it into a wholly personal activity. However, the seamless transition between mourning spaces and non-mourning spaces dissolves the spatial order established by death-mourning rituals, further blurring the boundary between these rituals and everyday life. These ever-accessible mourning spaces allow the living to spontaneously express grief toward the deceased, and as engagement deepens, they become increasingly difficult to disengage from. Over the long term, such digital platforms not only fail to alleviate the living’s longing for the departed but also intensify it, trapping the bereaved in an overreliance on the death-mourning spaces constructed by digital tombs:

When my mother first passed away, I missed her terribly. But after returning to the city for work, we grew distant. A friend told me about this digital mourning platform, so I created a digital mourning there. That way, I could see her every day . . . At first, it really helped. But gradually, I found myself opening it habitually whenever I had free time—I couldn’t control myself. My family has reminded me several times that this isn’t healthy, that it’s already affecting my daily life . . . (Content cut from DM23 interview transcript)

As the core medium for digital mourning, the “digital tomb” not only inherits the spatial attributes of traditional death rituals and death memory production but also disrupts and reshapes the traditional cultural and ethical order of death mourning through digitalization, driving the digital transformation of death memory. Notably, while these digital mourning spaces encourage autonomous participation and blur the boundaries between mourning and daily life, the resulting issues of arbitrary and disorderly commemorative activities are gradually eroding the social value of mourning rituals in preserving collective memory, spiritual continuity, and intergenerational belonging (Mariyono et al., 2025). The spatial migration generated by digital mourning merely represents a formal reshaping of traditional Chinese death rituals. To profoundly transform the deeply ingrained death memory of the Chinese people, it is necessary to establish a death-mourning order that aligns with the logic of digital space production.

Quantifying “mourning rituals”: The transplantation and dissolution of symbols from digital mourning spaces in traditional Chinese death memories

Traditional Chinese society placed great emphasis on death. The interplay of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophies gave rise to a comprehensive system of meticulously structured, complex death-mourning rituals (Hsu et al., 2009). This evolved into a symbolic system comprising mourning paraphernalia (incense, candles, funeral paper money, mourning attire, wreaths, etc.), mourning rituals (kneeling rites, incense offerings, and kinship-based protocols), and mourning participants (organizers and attendees). These symbols are deeply intertwined with death rituals and are regarded as the primary means of guiding the deceased safely to the afterlife (Braun and Nichols, 1997). Consequently, any form of mourning that transcends these rituals is viewed as abnormal or pathological (Howarth, 2000). This has made traditional Chinese death-mourning rituals not only the overarching framework for all mourning activities but also the symbolic logic governing the formation of public death memory in China. Research indicates that digital mourning platforms like “iCloud Mourning” gain popularity among the Chinese public primarily because they digitally transplant traditional death rituals. This facilitates the integration of digital mourning practices into—rather than replacing—traditional death culture (Bovero et al., 2020). By integrating the ritualistic and participatory nature of death commemoration with users’ personal mourning for the deceased, these platforms empower participants to engage in spatial production through traditional Chinese death commemoration symbols:

Actually, for us Chinese, the best way to mourn our departed loved ones is to burn incense, kowtow, offer funeral money, and place offerings at their graves . . . But now the government promotes civilized mourning practices and discourages these traditional methods. Yet I can’t help but wonder if without these rituals, they (referring to the narrator’s deceased loved ones) might not feel our remembrance. So I explored various alternatives and ultimately found the “iCloud Mourning” platform quite effective. It offers many of the customary mourning rituals we’re accustomed to, maintaining a strong sense of solemnity that allows me to feel I’m truly honoring my family . . . (Content cut from DM09 interview transcript)

The “Digital Mourning” platform has systematically “digitally transplanted” traditional Chinese funeral rituals. It not only meets the Chinese public’s practical need to convey their grief to the deceased through mourning rituals shaped by traditional memories of death—as well as the practice and expression of filial piety, one of the most important tenets of Chinese culture—but also resymbolizes these rituals through their digital presentation. This resymbolization manifests in two parallel and interrelated dimensions: the simplification of rituals and the commodification of rituals.

First, the simplification of rituals. In traditional funeral rites, rituals requiring physical participation—such as kowtowing and preliminary preparations—have been reduced to a brief touch of the fingertips on a screen: a single click or command is all it takes to complete a mourning ritual that once demanded significant time and physical effort. The complex procedures of traditional mourning, which required the collaboration and coordination of many people, have also evolved into a series of algorithmic commands: precise and efficient, yet calm and cold. While this simplification lowers the barrier to participation in mourning, it also replaces the sense of ritual associated with physical presence with the immediacy of interface interaction.

Second, the commodification of ritual symbols. This is the core operational mechanism of the commercial logic behind personal digital mourning platforms. To meet operational and profit needs, mourning items that once required only minimal financial investment—such as joss paper, incense, candles, and offerings—are now displayed with clear price tags in “digital stores,” where users can purchase them using virtual currency. An even more profound shift lies in the mourning rituals themselves—from bowing to kowtowing, from the number of bows or kowtows to the number of mourners, and even virtual attire—all of which are sold as commodities (see Figure 2). The ritual movements that traditionally required physical participation in death mourning can now be completed simply by purchase; the corresponding physical actions have been transformed into standardized animations on electronic screens: standardized, mechanical, and solemn, yet increasingly distant from the genuine emotional investment of the living.

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Figure 2.

Items required for mourning ceremonies are displayed on the “iCloud Mourning” (Yunshang Sinian) (each clearly priced).

This commodification mechanism is not an accidental “side effect” of platform operations, but rather a structural prerequisite for the survival of private digital mourning platforms. Platform companies have restructured mourning—an emotional practice that was originally highly private and non-transactional—into a user engagement activity with sustained consumption potential. Through avenues such as the purchase of virtual offerings, membership subscriptions, and value-added services, the gift economy of traditional mourning—where “emotions are conveyed through objects to honor loved ones”—is transformed into a transactional logic of “payment in exchange for mourning services.” In this process, mourners complete the ritual through consumption rather than through physical participation and emotional labor to maintain a symbolic connection with the deceased:

At first, I thought this method (digital mourning) was quite good. But later, I felt like on one side, the “me” on the screen was kowtowing and burning incense at my parents’ digital tomb, while on the other side, I was lying in bed staring blankly at my phone. It felt like I had participated in all the mourning activities, yet at the same time, it felt like I hadn’t . . . (Content cut from DM21 interview transcript)

At the beginning, even knowing it was virtual, I sat up straight and proper. But as the frequency increased, with distractions from the kids or household chores at home, sometimes after hurriedly paying for the service, I’d set my phone aside to attend to other matters. When I returned to check the phone much later, I’d find the mourning ceremony had already ended. (Content cut from DM12 interview transcript)

The systematic “digital transplantation” of traditional Chinese mourning rituals onto private digital mourning platforms has undoubtedly driven the modernization of mourning practices—it allows family members scattered across the globe to continue their mourning across time and space and, to some extent, adapts to the pace of life in the digital age. However, the dual processes of ritual simplification and commodification have also given rise to cultural consequences that warrant caution. On the one hand, while simplification lowers the technical barriers to mourning, it also erodes the emotional depth rooted in embodied rituals—a single click cannot replace the solemnity of a bow, and standardized animations struggle to convey individualized grief. On the other hand, commodification deeply ties mourning activities to the logic of capital. This not only erodes the ideological foundation upon which death-related mourning traditionally relies—namely, filial piety as an unconditional emotional obligation—but also gradually dismantles the social ethics and mechanisms of identification surrounding death-related mourning. When acts of mourning can be clearly priced and purchased on demand, the cultural sanctity and emotional uniqueness inherent in death itself face the risk of being diluted.

Consequently, digital mourning can create new spaces for the production of digital symbols in the context of death and mourning, driving a transformation in mourning practices while also subtly influencing the Chinese public’s memories of death on the levels of thought and cognition. However, this influence is not a one-dimensional “reshaping” but rather a process fraught with tension: while offering convenience and accessibility, it also structurally erodes the cultural core of traditional mourning through simplification and commodification. The resulting derivative issues—such as social and cultural identity, cultural beliefs, and moral norms—urgently require systematic reflection and a prudent response at the societal level.

Manifesting “mourning sentiments”: How digital mourning spaces inscribe and alienate traditional Chinese death memories

Traditional Chinese mourning rituals constitute a form of social and cultural labor and disciplined emotional labor. Within the “dialogue” scenarios they construct between the living and the deceased, the mourners’ emotions are directed both toward the departed and toward the living, with the latter occupying a more significant role (Yick and Gupta, 2002). Therefore, the mourners’ emotions must seek balance between catharsis and restraint. This manifests in strict constraints on the timing (traditional Chinese mourning divides the period of mourning into 7 cycles of 7 days each, with the final day of each cycle designated as a mourning day, during which vocal crying is encouraged), space (vocal crying is discouraged outside the deceased’s tomb), and collective versus individual expression (within the prescribed time and space of mourning rituals, the expression of grief is collective, requiring shared emotional connection with relatives).

Thus, within the mourning spaces constructed by traditional Chinese society, grief is often constrained by social institutions and rituals, with its duration, intensity, and scope all procedurally defined. However, while the mourning space constructed through time, space, and order can externally constrain the expression of grief, it cannot sever the emotional foundation of the living’s remembrance for the deceased, leaving them in an emotional predicament of ambiguous loss (Boss, 2016). Against this backdrop, commemorating and honoring the deceased through digital mourning platforms provided by social media has become a cultural practice for regulating death and the deceased, repositioning emotional experiences within mourning activities (Hutchings, 2012).

This study argues that the “iCloud Mourning” platform functions as a digital mourning space that reconstitutes ritual practices and mediates affective flows. The platform facilitates mediated affective practices through a dual process. First, it dismantles the spatiotemporal and socio-normative constraints inherent to traditional death rituals, enabling unrestrained and public expressions of grief. This constitutes a form of ritualized emotional disclosure. Second, it materializes and archives these affective expressions as digital traces—texts, emojis, images, and visit logs—thereby transforming private emotion into a persistent, visible record. These traces are not solely personal; their visibility to a networked audience of relatives and friends within the platform creates a shared, co-witnessed digital afterlife for the deceased (see Figure 3). Consequently, the platform operates simultaneously as an infrastructure for emotional catharsis and as a collaborative site for the ongoing (re)construction of familial memory and identity (Thimm and Nehls, 2017):

After creating a digital mourning account for my father, I invited all my relatives to join. Everyone can participate in the mourning together or pay their respects at their own convenience. Each visit leaves a record on the platform that we can all see. People leave messages, send virtual flowers, and share memories here. Every time I see these tributes, my eyes well up . . . (Content cut from DM19 interview transcript)

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Figure 3.

A personal mourning hall on the “iCloud Mourning” (Yunshang Sinian) (mourning records and friends and family invitation functions are clearly displayed).

This analysis further contends that data-driven mourning platforms produce a paradox of visibility: while digitally visualizing affect, they simultaneously obscure the lived emotional continuum between the bereaved and the deceased. For users, this constructs a Goffmanian dramaturgy of grief. The digitally curated “I” on-screen occupies the frontstage, performing as the visible avatar of sanctioned mourning sentiments. In contrast, the offline “I” recedes into the backstage, rendered invisible as the subjective site of raw, unstructured emotion. Consequently, the platform’s logic prioritizes the performance of sincere remembrance—achievable through interface interactions—over the internal, subjective state of the mourner. This reduces digital mourning to a datafied performance, where affective legitimacy is derived from platform engagement metrics rather than private feeling.

Thus, rather than facilitating a transformative engagement with China’s traditional mourning paradigms, such platforms risk accelerating their digital alienation. The intervention of the platform does not fundamentally reckon with traditional cosmologies of death and memory but transposes them into datafied “tombs.” Here, memory is not worked through but archived and placated through ritualized digital gestures. In this process, as Walter might suggest, all participants become unwitting pallbearers in the digital transformation of social memory, hearing its bells toll within the platform’s architecture (Walter, 2014).