Article Sidebar

Submitted
January 10, 2022
Accepted
May 7, 2022
Published
August 31, 2022
Download
PDF
Statistic
Read Counter : 152 Download : 126

Main Article Content

Abstract

Through in-depth interviews with 28 Iranian social media users, this paper examines the reaction of social media users to the perceived death of their online friends in order to find common threads of anxieties and uncertainties among users who experienced such events. We found that subjects experience contextual, cognitive and emotional difficulties in absorbing the news, leading them to go through an initial stage of wandering before dealing with the actual trauma. Such difficulties are categorized in terms of 5 generic conditions: Conceptual Dilemma, Rational Denial, Situational Puzzlement, Relational Confusion, and Environmental Inconsistency. With ample examples, we have discussed each condition and their interrelatedness. It seems that rather than an absolute fact, the death of an online friend is understood, or felt, as a fuzzy state of mixed presence and absence, in relation to which later death events in online or even offline situations may be understood.

Keywords

Medium Social Media Death Friends Trauma Reaction

Article Details

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Mohammad Memarian

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
How to Cite
Memarian, M. (2022). “They Are Not Gone – yet!” : Social Media Users’ Reaction to the Perceived Death of Cyber Acquaintances. Asian Journal of Media and Communication, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.20885/asjmc.vol6.iss1.art1
Download Citation
Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
BibTeX
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

References

  1. Atton, C. (2008). Citizen journalism. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication (pp. 94–95). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405186407.wbiecc027
  2. Bailenson, J. N., Yee, N., Blascovich, J., & Guadagno, R. E. (2008). Transformed social interaction in mediated interpersonal communication. In E. A. Konijn, S. Utz, M. Tanis, & S. B. Barnes (Eds.), Mediated Interpersonal Communication (pp. 77–99). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203926864
  3. Bechmann, A., & Bowker, G. C. (2019). Unsupervised by any other name: Hidden layers of knowledge production in artificial intelligence on social media. Big Data & Society, 6(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718819569
  4. Binjola, H., & Patel, K. (2020). Fake news swamping interpersonal communication in the times of corona virus. International Journal on Transformations of Media, Journalism & Mass Communication, 5(1), 416–417. http://management.eurekajournals.com/index.php/IJTMJMC/article/view/416
  5. Blower, J., & Sharman, R. (2021). To grieve or not to grieve (online)? Interactions with deceased Facebook friends. Death Studies, 45(3), 167–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2019.1626937
  6. Corbin, J., & Morse, J. M. (2003). The unstructured interactive interview: Issues of reciprocity and risks when dealing with sensitive topics. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(3), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403009003001
  7. Fowler, D. R., Weber, E. N., Klappa, S. P., & Miller, S. A. (2017). Replicating future orientation: Investigating the constructs of hope and optimism and their subscales through replication and expansion. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PAID.2017.04.010
  8. Kahne, J., & Bowyer, B. (2018). The political significance of social media activity and social networks. Political Communication, 35(3), 470–493. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2018.1426662
  9. Karkar, A. J., & Burke, L. M. (2020). “It’s your loss”: Making loss one’s own through blog narrative practices. Death Studies, 44(4), 210–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2018.1531087
  10. Kübler-Ross, E. (2014). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families. In Scribner.
  11. Miguel, C. (2018). Personal relationships and intimacy in the age of social media. In Springer International Publishing.
  12. Moyer, L. M., & Enck, S. (2020). Is my grief too public for you? The digitalization of grief on FacebookTM. Death Studies, 44(2), 89–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2018.1522388
  13. Rolbiecki, A. J., Washington, K. T., & Bitsicas, K. (2021). Digital storytelling as an intervention for bereaved family members. OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 82(4), 570–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222819825513
  14. Scourfield, J., Evans, R., Colombo, G., Burrows, D., Jacob, N., Williams, M., & Burnap, P. (2020). Are youth suicide memorial sites on Facebook different from those for other sudden deaths? Death Studies, 44(12), 793–801. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2019.1614109
  15. Serafinelli, E. (2018). Digital life on instagram. Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/9781787564954
  16. Stebbins, R. (2001). Exploratory research in the social sciences. SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412984249
  17. Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2021). Bereavement in times of COVID-19: A review and theoretical framework. OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 82(3), 500–522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222820966928
  18. Thurber, J. A. (2017). Personal skype interview with the author about political campaigns.
  19. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. In Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.
  20. Varzi, R. (2006). Warring souls. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11317cq
  21. Westerlund, M. U. (2020). The usage of digital resources by Swedish suicide bereaved in their grief work: A survey study. OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 81(2), 272–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222818765807