TORONTO – A mass shooting in a Colorado movie theatre, fatal bullets in a Toronto food court, and a wife in Quebec learning her husband killed himself and their two children. In all three of these tragedies, many people-some of whom are family members of victims-expressed their reaction and grief on social media.
Facebook and Twitter are more and more frequently being used as a way to announce a death and pay tribute to loved ones. YouTube and blogs have become platforms for eulogies, and chat rooms provide immediate help to people who experience specific types of loss.
So where does this impulse to share grief online come from, and is it changing the way we experience loss as a culture?
Dr. Leeat Granek is a health psychologist who studies grief, and wrote her dissertation on how people very recently came to think of grief as something that’s a) psychological and b) something that can be judged as going on too long or too short, too intense or not intense enough. Granek says we’re onto a trend where people are going online to express grief, but that this impulse to share is nothing new.
“It’s the same thing as getting together with people when you used to go over to someone’s house with a casserole,” says Granek. “But now…that’s become an online space instead of a physical space.”
Associate professor Dr. Mel Borins at the University of Toronto says that for some people, social media have replaced real community.
“Our friends and relatives have been replaced by a virtual community,” writes Borins in an email to Globalnews.ca.
But is that a bad thing?
Queen’s University professor Jill Scott studies the social dynamics of mourning and grief, and she believes social media as a medium is neutral.
“The medium itself is not positive or negative…it’s how we use it that matters,” says Scott, echoing Canadian literary critic Marshall McLuhan.
Benefits and risks
Even if you consider social media a neutral platform, Granek and Scott point out both positive and negative aspects of using it to express grief. Social media is used to form online groups for people experiencing very specific types of losses, such as parents whose children have died, notes Granek. Since our culture puts emphasis on getting over grief fairly quickly (e.g. allowing only two days off from work), online networks can be the only place people find support months or years after a loss.
Scott adds that some people are not ready to have face-to-face contact when grieving, and that it’s unhealthy to force people into more interaction before they’re ready. Social media is an outlet where barriers can be let down without the intense vulnerability of expressing grief in person.
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Granek also refers to a study about different types of support mourners received after a major loss. The study looked at people coming to visit the mourner in person, but also people sending emails, texts, and calling on the phone. The study found the mourners really appreciated the electronic support, and wanted the constant contact.
But a potential risk is the loss of the physical presence of another person, which Granek says is very valuable.
“At the end of the day, you’re still sitting at home alone on your computer typing,” she says. “So there may be a sense of community that you’re building online, but there isn’t actually that physical presence of that other person putting their hand on your shoulder, giving you a hug…all those things that we used to do for mourners.”
Scott adds that people sometimes hide behind a potential multitude of online personas, and forget that anything posted on the Internet can and will be seen by everybody. Even if it’s not appropriate to judge people for their grief, most people with an online account have learned that Twitter reaction is not always sensitive.
“Whether or not social media actually helps people to move on…I think the jury is out about that,” says Scott.
Walking the public / private line
Mourning on social media can be both a very public act and a very private one.
On the one hand, you are alone with your computer, typing out your thoughts, and you can avoid sharing the physical manifestation of grief with other people.
On the other hand, when your grief becomes part of the Internet landscape, your emotion becomes public and potentially thousands of people can respond to it.
Both Granek and Scott say an important question is whether it’s the same to get condolences from people you only know online as from people you know well in person.
“There is a tendency to have an assumed audience…of who one is hoping to get support from,” says Scott. “So you might end up getting support from a whole bunch of people who you could never have conceived might care about your story, and that could be a great thing,” says Scott. Of course, it could also attract people who react in ways that aren’t positive towards you, she says.
“I think the value of having condolences of people who you don’t know is that you really feel like you’re not alone,” says Granek. “I’m not sure if it’s the same feeling as having a family member or somebody close to you, or somebody who knew the person that died, come over and give you a hug, be with you while you’re crying, provide you with food, help you with childcare… all the kinds of things people need when they’re having an intense grieving experience.”
Grief in context
Today’s society has seen an increase in public mourning in general. The death of Princess Diana, 9/11, the death of Jack Layton and the recent Colorado movie theatre shooting have all brought people together to publicly share in their pain, and social media can be considered an extension of that trend.
Granek believes using Facebook and Twitter as outlets for grief makes sense within our specific cultural context-a culture that isn’t very comfortable with mourning, and doesn’t allow for the free expression of grief for a very long period of time.
“In a culture where we no longer have a lot of community rituals around grief and loss, where religion is no longer a major part of people’s lives, where people are living in urban centres and are very lonely, where people don’t have these huge networks where people just drop everything and come over…it makes a lot of sense that you still need support and you’re going to go online and find other people who are going to understand, acknowledge and validate you,” says Granek.
Scott believes that people today are reaching out to social media to create meaning using storytelling-a process that is evident in every culture around the word.
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