Unshareable: Non-Sharing Grief and Grievabilities on Social Media

IF 4.9 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2026-03-11 DOI:10.1177/20563051261430718

Tamara Borovica, Katrin Gerber, Larissa Hjorth

{"title":"Unshareable: Non-Sharing Grief and Grievabilities on Social Media","authors":"Tamara Borovica, Katrin Gerber, Larissa Hjorth","doi":"10.1177/20563051261430718","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"For death-online scholars, online rituals of loss and death help to challenge and reinforce social and moral order. The digital mediates, remediates and ‘mediatises’ both life and death. While grieving is an individual, internal process, mourning is an external practice that can help to connect us with others. Mourning is culturally specific. It is collective. Through posting eulogies online and sharing experiences of loss, we can enhance our grief literacy through grief vernaculars. The role of the digital in connecting us to informal processes of mourning and memorialisation is vast. However, what about the people who choose not to share online? Who decides not to post their tributes, eulogies and memories online? This article seeks to explore this under-researched phenomenon. Much like ‘non-use’, unshareability and non-sharing are crucial parts of contemporary digital culture. In this article, we investigate experiences of unshareability. Drawing from over 57 interviews with participants dealing with all types of loss and grief, we focus on examples of seven participants who spoke about the complications with sharing and choices not to share. We explore those tensions and how this reflects grievabilities – who is digitally mournable and who is not.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051261430718","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

For death-online scholars, online rituals of loss and death help to challenge and reinforce social and moral order. The digital mediates, remediates and ‘mediatises’ both life and death. While grieving is an individual, internal process, mourning is an external practice that can help to connect us with others. Mourning is culturally specific. It is collective. Through posting eulogies online and sharing experiences of loss, we can enhance our grief literacy through grief vernaculars. The role of the digital in connecting us to informal processes of mourning and memorialisation is vast. However, what about the people who choose not to share online? Who decides not to post their tributes, eulogies and memories online? This article seeks to explore this under-researched phenomenon. Much like ‘non-use’, unshareability and non-sharing are crucial parts of contemporary digital culture. In this article, we investigate experiences of unshareability. Drawing from over 57 interviews with participants dealing with all types of loss and grief, we focus on examples of seven participants who spoke about the complications with sharing and choices not to share. We explore those tensions and how this reflects grievabilities – who is digitally mournable and who is not.

查看原文本刊更多论文

不可分享：社交媒体上无法分享的悲伤和委屈

对于在线死亡学者来说，在线失去和死亡仪式有助于挑战和加强社会和道德秩序。数字媒介调解、补救和“调解”生与死。虽然悲伤是一种个人的、内在的过程，但哀悼是一种外在的实践，可以帮助我们与他人联系起来。哀悼是有文化特殊性的。它是集体的。通过在网上发表悼词和分享失去亲人的经历，我们可以通过悲伤的方言提高我们的悲伤素养。在将我们与非正式的哀悼和纪念过程联系起来方面，数字的作用是巨大的。然而，那些选择不在网上分享的人呢？谁决定不在网上发表他们的悼念、悼词和回忆？本文试图探讨这一研究不足的现象。就像“不使用”一样，不可共享性和不可共享性是当代数字文化的重要组成部分。在本文中，我们研究了不可共享性的经验。从57位面对各种损失和悲伤的参与者的采访中，我们重点关注了7位参与者的例子，他们谈到了分享和选择不分享的复杂性。我们探讨了这些紧张关系，以及这如何反映了人们的不满——谁在数字上值得哀悼，谁不是。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.