“I didn't know her, but…”: parasocial mourning of mediated deaths on Facebook RIP pages

Abstract

This article examines the use of six Danish "Rest in Peace" or (RIP) memorial pages. The article focuses on the relation between news media and RIP page use, in relation to general communicative practices on these pages. Based on an analysis of press coverage of the deaths of six young people and a close analysis of 1,015 comments extracted from the RIP pages created to memorialize them, it is shown that their deaths attracted considerable media attention, as did the RIP pages themselves. Comment activity seem to reflect the news stories in the way the commenters refer to the context of death and the emotional distress they experience, but mainly comments on the RIP pages are conventional expressions of sympathy and "RIP" wishes. The article concludes that public RIP pages might be understood as virtual spontaneous shrines, affording an emerging practice of "RIP-ing."

“TO ME ITS [SIC] REAL LIFE”: Secondary Victims of Homicide in Newer Media

“…unknown others take over mourning, memorialization and commemoration. (Walter, 2014, p. 3) Research is beginning to emerge which examines the phenomena of strangers mourning people unknown to them in newer media spaces and some of the difficulties associated with this (Klastrup, 2014;Phillips, 2011). However, "yet to be researched is how shared grief, private grief and digital commemoration within such online communities connects, or does not connect, to the deceased's offline friends and family" (Walter, 2014, p. 7).…”

Death and Communal Mass-Mourning: Vin Diesel and the Remembrance of Paul Walker

“…Many commenters resort to using the conventional "Rest in Peace" phrase, especially in relation to Post B, the day marking a year since Paul Walker died. Expressing condolences through the use of variations on the "rest in peace" phrase is a common practice observed in previous studies (Klastrup, 2011(Klastrup, , 2015. Other commenters use multiple emoticons, in particular heart emoticons or emojis to show their sympathy for VD and their love for Walker, for instance like this " ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤" (male, post b).…”

“…The coding of the comments was carried out taking a point of departure in a coding scheme, previously developed by the author for a study of "parasocial mourning" on public R.I.P pages for young people whose death got lot of media attention (Klastrup, 2015). The scheme was, however, adapted to reflect and incorporate the fact that since the comments in this sample were made on a fan page, some comments were likely to include or serve as clear expressions of fandom targeted either directly at VD or Paul Walker, or the fictional universe developed in the Fast and Furious movies.…”

“…Bulck & Larsson, 2017;Courbet & Courbet, 2014;Gil-Egui, Kern-stone, & Forman, 2016;Harju, 2015;Radford & Bloch, 2012;Sanderson & Cheong, 2010;Walter, 2011), attention has so far been focused on memorial pages created by fans or the mourning of a celebrity on for instance Twitter, and the phenomena of mourning with a celebrity on his Facebook page has not yet been explored. Therefore, The Vin Diesel case may provide useful new insights into the interplay between fandom, affect, and the emerging practice of parasocial mourning on social media (see Klastrup, 2011Klastrup, , 2015DeGroot & Leith, 2015;Gil-Egui et al, 2016). Specifically, this article examines how over the span of more than a year (during which the latest Fast and Furious film was also completed without Walker), VD wrote about and engaged his Facebook followers in his mourning process.…”

‘Everywhere I go, you’re going with me’: Time and space deixis as affective positioning resources in shared moments of digital mourning

“…Previous studies of death and mourning online have contributed to a better understanding of the type of activity of post-mortem profile pages and their usefulness for the bereaved (see section 2.1). Less attention has been paid to sharing activity on memorial group sites on social networking sites, with the exception of the study of pages created in memory of celebrities or public figures that give rise to mediated spectacles of disaster and affect (Klastrup, 2014). This article provides an analysis of a Facebook Rest In Peace (R.I.P.)…”