‘It was the easiest way to kind of announce it’: exploring death announcements on social media through a dramaturgical lens

Abstract

The internet and social media have radically transformed grief, mourning and memorialisation. This article addresses how online death announcements (ODAs) (where bereaved people use social media platforms to share news of a loved one's death) are extending beyond the role of public death notification previously limited to newspaper-published obituaries. We argue that ODAs are social performances embodying a diverse range of grief responses and offer a significant new direction in death scholarship. We draw on semi-structured interview data with nine people who announced the death of a loved one on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Using a dramaturgical framework to interrogate this data, we argue that ODAs go beyond purely information-sharing devices and are, instead, complex performances which benefit mourners in a number of ways and are governed by tacit 'rules' of permission and content. To make sense of this, we analyse in turn the role of, and collaboration between, the 'actors' who post ODAs, the 'performance' of the ODA itself, and the 'audience' of friends/followers who 'receive' the ODA. We reveal that ODAs are social performances possessing multiple modalities and reveal the depth of complexity present in grieving online.

Challenges and opportunities of Facebook during bereavement: experiences from Taung in South Africa

“…Moreover, some of these values and models do not align with the African values, norms, and models of bereavement. Murrell et al (2021) explained that using the internet and social media in everyday life has significantly changed grieving and memorialization processes. This has provided valuable insights into how online death practices can be discursive yet visual, public yet private, and individual yet universal.…”

“You’re Just Playing the Victim”: Online Grieving and the Non-use of Social Media in Italy

“…Moreover, the platforms are more appropriate for instrumental uses, concerning work or study, commercial purposes or self-promotion. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when Italians remediate more traditional obituaries and funeral posters by using social media to inform people, quickly and cheaply, of a death (Murrell et al, 2021). The possibility to reach everyone with a message on Facebook or a WhatsApp group is much appreciated (where news “travels fast”) when people are busy with bureaucratic and administrative issues:The daughter of my uncle posted something kind of poetic on Facebook and then she wrote that we could go to the vigil.…”