Fostering online communities through pakikiramay and pakikidalamhati on memorialized Facebook accounts

Abstract

Memorializing the dead through death rituals has inevitably permeated in online spaces. In particular, Facebook users have maximized the platform to commemorate the dead, thereby forming communal digital mourning. Hence, this paper investigates how Filipinos foster an online community through their online practices of the Filipino concept of pakikipagkapwa[one-of-us] in pakikiramay and pakikidalamhati. Guided by Virgilio Enriquez’s Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology) and Rotman and Preece’s (2010) characteristics of online communities, this paper investigated 593 posts from 24 memorialized Facebook accounts using textual analysis. Findings reveal that pakikiramay [sympathizing with another] and pakikidalamhati [sharing the burden of mourning] expressed through practicing death rituals using the technological affordances of Facebook demonstrate that the bereaved has maintained company with the departed in life and in death (“I have been with you, and I will always be with you”). Communal digital grief affirms that the bereaved are never alone while in mourning (“We are together in mourning”).