SALON

Friday, Oct 7, 2011 3:08 PM UTC

When mourning goes viral

The 2.5 million tweets after Steve Jobs' death prove just how profoundly social media have transformed mourning

By

Topics: Social Media, Computers, Steve Jobs, Facebook,

When mourning goes viralA man uses his iPhone to photograph image of Steve Jobs (Credit: AP/Sakchai Lalit)

Soon after news of Steve Jobs’ death emerged Wednesday, millions of hashtags, posts and YouTube videos erupted on Facebook and Twitter to memorialize his life and express sadness for the loss of a technology visionary. Twitter alone was overrun with 2.5 million tweets about Jobs in the 12 hours after he died. As someone who revolutionized the digital world, it seems eminently appropriate that mourners took their grieving online — especially since social media has, in many ways, helped reinvent the way we approach death in modern society.

First, it gives people who have something to say an unprecedented audience that’s both instantaneous and quintessentially democratic. The eulogy is no longer the preserve of the great and the good. Online, anyone can be a broadcaster, a commentator or a curator of news and information.

Social media has also awakened the newshound in many of us. We want to be the first to comment, and when it comes to death, we no longer have to sit back passively and wait for the obit in the next morning’s newspaper. Moreover, we can be part of a popularity contest, as blogs listing the “10 most quoted tweets about Steve Jobs” demonstrate.

Using death as a competition to produce the fastest tweet or the post with the most hits might seem a little self-serving and, frankly, insensitive. But there’s more to this than just a race to be first. Collective mourning is important in any society. It unites us and gives us permission to contemplate personal loss — to pull those deep reserves of grief out from their hiding places. Social media assists this process. More of us can engage when, rather than having to walk to a remembrance site (or an Apple store) with a yellow ribbon or drive to a roadside shrine with flowers, we can sit at home and tap out our feelings.

When it comes to grieving, social media gives us instant, global connectivity as well as a rich palette for expression. Online, text, photographs, audio and video mean we can easily share memories and broadcast public reflection. Essentially, technology is turbo-charging the process of collective mourning.

However, social media also returns to us things we’ve lost — a few rules, for a start. Today’s secular society gives little guidance on how to deal with grief. In the absence of traditional mourning rituals, we struggle in the face of death. What should we say? What should we do? In societies where ritual remains strong, no one needs to ask how to express loss or honor the dead. Specified times and places for grieving are part of carefully defined of cultural conventions. The rules allow for emotion but set boundaries for mourners, preventing unfettered anguish from being let loose.

If rituals provide ways of containing our grief, online formats do something similar. They give us room for creativity but they also set limitations (in the case of Twitter, that’s 140 characters). Whether it’s Facebook’s wall, an online newsfeed or a tweet, online formats establish the kinds of frameworks that help us hold it together when we feel we’re falling apart.

Technology also gives us back convening power. For death has never — at least until recently — been a solitary affair. You still see it in the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva, with friends and neighbours visiting the bereaved during the seven-day mourning period. In New Guinea, the moment someone from the Mafulu tribe of dies, all the men start shouting loudly — or at least they did in 1910, when ethnologist Robert Wood Williamson, recorded details of their death rites. This was partly to scare off evil spirits, but as the chain of shouts moved from village to village, residents from surrounding valleys poured into the home of the deceased as word spread that the community had just lost one of its members.

Obviously, this isn’t so easy today. Friends and family are dispersed more widely than ever. In this globalized world, we need to find ways of shouting about our dead and places in which to gather to express empathy and support. And if we can’t do that physically, we can do it online. As humans, we’re hardwired to form communities and to unite at our most significant moments. So while in volume, speed and global reach, what we saw on Wednesday in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death was new, in some ways it was nothing more than a high-tech version of a practice that’s been going on for centuries — the practice of getting together to say goodbye.

Sarah Murray is author of “Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre — How We Dignify the Dead” (St Martin’s Press, October 11, 2011); www.makinganexit.net, @makinganexit, makinganexit.tumblr.com

More Sarah Murray.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 13 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
114 points115 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
101 points102 points | 8 comments
vote
Journalists file suit against Manning trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
56 points57 points | 3 comments
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of all Americans struggle to afford food
55 points56 points | 16 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
47 points48 points | 65 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations