From Mourning to Healing: Continuing Bonds With Strangers in Chinese Social Media.

Abstract

The study examined the distinctive characteristics and underlying motivations of communication behaviours within the comment sections of Weibo posts belonging to deceased strangers. Taking the comment section of the last post of deceased user @Zoufan on Weibo, one of the most influential social media platforms in China, as a case study, the study adopted the humanities computing method to develop an artificial 'close reading' based on quantitative descriptions and topic clustering of the texts of more than 80,000 comments. Findings showed that in China, people engage in conversations with other mourners, the deceased, and themselves on the deceased's Weibo. Mourners built a social support network through emotional communication among mourners and constructed continuing bonds with the deceased through self-expression. The motivations of the mourning practices are self-help mental healing. The findings contribute to the scholarship on stranger mourning and the mediatization of mourning practices and dialogic healing in China.