Digital Bereavement: Bringing “back stage”
emotion onto an entirely new “front stage”
More than 400 million people use Facebook to stay connected with others, but when one of these people dies, what happens to their profile? In this digital age, we create an online presence that is shaped over the course of many years; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, etc. in a sense become digital blueprints of our lives. Not only do these profiles carry on the memory of the deceased, they also become a valuable anchor for a social support network for grieving friends and family. In October of 2009, Facebook officially announced the ability to “memorialize” Facebook accounts, a feature which protects the privacy of the deceased while allowing friends and family to continue posting on his or her wall. Memorialized Facebook pages provide a new way for mourners to cope with grief, reminisce, relay logistics of funeral services, and even communicate with the deceased. Our research will focus specifically on Facebook, but we intend to be able to apply our conclusions to social networking sites in general. Our goal is to inform social networking sites of ways to facilitate digital bereavement through, for example, improved social support networks and more effective website structure/setup.
RESEARCH QUESTION
When Facebook members post on deceased members’ profile walls/memorial groups, what does their language use tell us about their motivation for posting? Emotions and thoughts traditionally reserved for the privacy of diary pages are now being publicly (or somewhat publicly) posted for many to see, even though these posts are often directly addressed to the deceased. Facebook has thus made it possible for mourners to bring their “backstage” emotions of grief and loss to a digital “front stage,” (Goffman) but what are their motivations to do so?
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Our experiment will include a survey and count and code approach. Survey questions will be based on past similar research and prior questionnaires (i.e. those designed to assess bereavement experience and process). Ideally, we want to target Facebook friends of deceased Facebook users, but decided it was better to survey (via Facebook or email) a wider range of Facebookers. To help increase participation, we will offer an incentive such as a chance to win a gift certificate.
For our other approach, we will be counting and coding based on different categories of wall/memorial group posts. We intend to define motivation categories such as: reminiscence/memories, conversational, longing, disbelief, and logistics. By mapping specific words to our categories, we will be using language to deduce motivation. Furthermore, we will distinguish and analyze potential differences between posts directed to the deceased versus those directed to the social support network at large. The frequency of posts in regards to time (right after the death versus after some time) and the timing of non-immediate posts (whether they tend to fall more on special dates such as birthdays or the anniversary of the death) will also be recorded.
We are contacting Facebook for more information about their decision to include the memorializing feature and for statistics regarding the number of memorialized profiles.
Our research topic is particularly relevant in light of the recent deaths among the Cornell community. As our lives and interactions increasingly become situated online, it is not surprising that online spaces have become a new form of social support.
QUESTIONS
- Do you know of any resources that can help us define categories of Facebook posts and associate words to categories?
- Advice on ways to measure emotions such as grief? We've come across questionnaires/scales measuring bereavement/grief from past research, but none that really 100% fits our experiment. Do you have advice on constructing a more effective survey?
- Have groups in the past had trouble getting enough survey responses? Is there a way that past groups have distributed surveys (especially to the Cornell community) that has been more successful than others? (i.e. email versus Facebook)
Sources
Karas, Tanya. (2010). The psychology of postmortem Facebook. http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/the-weekly/the-psychology-of-postmortem-facebook-1.2139775.
Kelly, Max. (2009). Memories of Friends Departed Endure on Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=163091042130.
Statistics: Company Figures. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.
Hello all,
ReplyDeleteThis is just a fantastic project, with a lot of real potential. The general area is important, and I think the most work you'll need to do, as discussed in class, will be to narrow down your research questions and interests. I know we went further than what you wrote here in class, but I don't think that the survey approach is the most useful. I think that a content analysis combined with some insights into the policy issues (which will be good for knowing how to frame your piece) might be the best approach.
The content analysis can include a coding scheme that you develop that examines some pattern you observe after looking at a number of memorialized profiles, and it can/should include an automated text analysis. The text analysis tool LIWC, which Ellis is familiar with, is easy to use and includes categories for emotion, as well as for religion, death and other relevant categories. Take a look at the Tauzck & Pennebaker paper now up on BlackBoard.
I am very excited by your project. Now its just a matter of focusing the research questions.
This is a perfect post, and your grade reflects that.
Also, to your questions:
* Do you know of any resources that can help us define categories of Facebook posts and associate words to categories?
-there was a special issue in JCMC co-edited by boyd and Ellison that examined social networking sites. Those articles in that issue will have relevant information regarding categories.
* Advice on ways to measure emotions such as grief? We've come across questionnaires/scales measuring bereavement/grief from past research, but none that really 100% fits our experiment. Do you have advice on constructing a more effective survey?
As I noted, I don't think that a survey is the best approach. But, if you really want to include one, then I have a few books of measures in my office that I can bring to class. I'm sure there are related ones.
* Have groups in the past had trouble getting enough survey responses? Is there a way that past groups have distributed surveys (especially to the Cornell community) that has been more successful than others? (i.e. email versus Facebook)
- its always difficult to get a good sample. In your case it will be especially hard because it is a small population (people who have posted on memorialized profiles). we can discuss if you still want to do the survey.