Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Research Proposal

Digital Bereavement:
articulating the unheard utterances

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for
words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
–Harriet Beecher Stowe

GRIEF
Grief is a universal emotion caused by a major loss, especially of a close friend or family member. People handle grief in different ways, but there are certain patterns and phases believed to be common to all cultures. The grieving, or bereavement, process begins with the death of a loved one. This process is typically very emotional and stressful, which can lead to many risks if there is an absence of support. These risks include major changes in social relationships, challenges to faith and beliefs, and various stress-related illnesses. Understanding these patterns and how people cope with grief is important for the prevention of these risks. These risks are elevated when feelings of grief are suppressed and communication with others is limited. Grief is commonly a backstage emotion; it is rare to see people grieve publicly. However, people experience the most relief when this emotion is brought to the forefront. Simply hearing others' stories of grief or sharing one's own stories about a memory of the deceased can constitute as support [1].


GRIEF AND TECHNOLOGY
During the grieving process, support typically comes in the form of religious and cultural practices: funerals, memorial services, etc. Such practices offer people a place to come together for mourning and support from others experiencing the same loss. However, after these ceremonies, this “formal” support is limited—bereaved individuals are less likely to be in the presence of so many people sharing the same grief. The emergence of technology has created new spaces for social support, extending beyond the support traditionally offered in a more formal setting. Email and instant messaging provide simple ways to share logistical information and support among friends and family. Online support groups and memorial pages become sources for social support. Photo albums and videos remembering or honoring the deceased can be easily shared through various technologies. People today undeniably use a wide array of technologies to aid in the bereavement process.


GRIEF AND FACEBOOK
Technology can play another role in the grieving process. In this digital age, we create an online presence that is shaped over the course of many years; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, blogs and in a sense these become digital blueprints of our lives. Unlike other forms of technology, social networking sites go beyond simply providing spaces for the interaction of grieving friends and family by offering an opportunity to directly communicate with loved ones who have passed away. Posting messages on Facebook pages of the deceased has now become a common practice. The very nature of the Facebook wall and other social network site features provides users with a natural place to write these messages. It is natural to write on the wall of a friend's profile; you would normally leave messages directed towards the user, if the user were still alive.The use of Facebook and other social networking sites for this purpose is a fairly new phenomenon, though Facebook appears to be the only one with a set policy addressing profiles of users who have passed away. 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 [4].

The uses of technology in the grieving process have been studied, but little is known about the motivation behind posting messages on profile pages of the deceased. This study focuses on analyzing the language of these messages, which will shed light on the motivations of the people posting these messages. Determining the motivation behind these messages can lead to a better understanding of the potential benefits that social networking sites can provide in the grieving process.


ARGUMENTS AND PREDICTIONS
While there are few studies examining the area of social networking and bereavement, there are a plethora of studies dealing with the process of grief and the use of technology in grief, which might explain some of the motivation behind posting messages to the deceased. It is useful to examine Lombard and Selverian’s analysis [5] of technology and bereavement. Lombard and Selverian suggest that there is a need for a telepresence after death, and technology has provided the means for us to evoke a highly vivid and realistic presence of the deceased. Within the framework of this theory, Facebook and other social networking sites simply provide us with an effective way to remember the deceased; through the blueprint and traces left by the deceased, a mourner can use a social networking site to evoke the presence of the deceased.

There are many interactions between the users that Lombard and Selverinan’s theory does not account for. Massimi [6] provides a more in-depth analysis on how bereaved individuals use technology in order to respond to loss. Massimi suggests that, in addition to remembering an individual, technology can be used share memories of the deceased as a group: “Group commemoration is an important aspect of bereavement, and different technologies are used for this purpose.” These social networking sites provide a more effective and intimate way for individuals to share information, photos, and memories of the deceased.

These two theories already provide motivations to use social networking sites in order to cope with the grieving process, but there is a critical factor that both of these theories do not account for. Grieving individuals post messages as if the deceased individual were still alive—this is analogous to visiting the deceased individual in a cemetery and speaking directly to the individual. DeGroot [2] was one of the first to address this issue in her analysis of maintaining the relationships with the deceased via Facebook memorial groups. DeGroot noted that there are several audiences and objectives that people are trying to address when posting to a Facebook group. Some of these audiences include the deceased individual and the members of the memorial group. DeGroot’s research provides a good foundation to understand the motivations behind posting messages to a deceased profile page.

Based on Bruflat's research [1] and Stone's [7] observations, we expect most, if not all, the wall posts to be directed towards to the deceased as if they were still alive. Bruflat's research focused on the role that long-term communication plays in the bereavement process of bereaved families. When sharing stories about the deceased, people chose to communicate about them in the present tense and also chose to use the deceased person's name. By using the name of the deceased and speaking about them in the present tense, grievers communicate that the decease is still a topic that can be discussed, not a topic which should be suppressed during the grieving process. Stone observed, in her article "Grief in the Age of Facebook", that most of the messages posted on the wall of the deceased member's profile page were addressed to the individual directly, not to share memories with others reading the profile. Because of this, we expect that the main motivation for posting on a deceased member's profile page is to help maintain a continuing bond with the deceased individual.


EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Facebook wall posts of deceased members will be analyzed using a series of text and linguistic analysis. The messages that were posted after the death of the deceased member will be coded based on the 12 categories that DeGroot presents: shock, technology-related references, prose, spirituality, lamentation and questions, phatic communication, memories, continued presence and reminders, updates, appreciation, promises and requests, and eventual reunion. Linguistic features will then be extracted using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. This text analysis program will count and categorize each word. LIWC's dictionary provides analysis with over 70 linguistic dimensions. All dimensions will be considered in our analysis to allow for potential patterns that we were unaware of; however, we will pay particular attention to relevant categories such as verb tense, death, sadness, negative emotion, positive emotion, sadness, anger, anxiety, friends, and family. Any emergent patterns in linguistic content found during this study will be cross-validated across all the wall posts of the deceased members.



References

Bruflat, R. A. (2007). Gone, but not forgotten: Long-term communication strategies of bereaved families. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention, TBA, Chicago, IL Online. Retrieved March 2, 2010, from All Academic website: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p191217_index.html
DeGroot, J. M. (2009). Reconnecting with the Dead via Facebook: Examining Transcorporeal Communication as a Way to Maintain Relationships. (Doctoral dissertation, Scripps College of Communication, 2009).
Karas, T. (2010, February 5). The psychology of postmortem Facebook. Retrieved February 18, 2010, from Daily Northwestern website: http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/the-weekly/the-psychology-of-postmortem-facebook-1.2139775.
Kelly, M. (2009, October 26). Memories of Friends Departed Endure on Facebook.Retrieved February 18, 2010, from Facebook Blog website: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=163091042130.
Lombard, M., & Selverian, M. E. M. (2008). Telepresence after death. Presence: Teleoper. Virtual Environ., 17(3), 310-325
Massimi, M., & Baecker, R. M. (2010). A Death in the Family: Opportunities for Designing Technologies for the Bereaved. CHI 2010.
Stone, E. (2010, February 28). Grief in the Age of Facebook. Retrieved March 2, 2010, from Chronicle website: http://chronicle.texterity.com/chronicle/20100305b/?pg=20
Statistics: Company Figures. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.

1 comment:

  1. Hello Uncommon Ground,

    Your proposal continues to evolve in an exciting way. I think you've found some excellent frameworks to help organize your research into the language patterns on these sites.

    A few recommendations and thoughts:
    1. try not to focus on the researcher/author, but rather on their idea, theory or framework
    2. you need to do a better job succinctly summarizing each framework's main idea/thesis. It seems you are drawing on three frameworks related to this - be clear about each one, and then relate that to your predictions and analysis
    3. the plan seems good, but if you use LIWC then we'll need to think of a control group. That is, language that is related (e.g., facebook wall posts) but not about grieving so that you can examine verb tense differences etc.

    I think that we should ask the following folks to follow your blog:

    Bruflat
    DeGroot
    Karas
    Kelly
    Lombard, Selverian
    Massimi
    Stone

    Finally, with the exception of the author focus and lack of detail on the frameworks, this is really nicely written.

    Right now, its an A proposal. Nicely done.

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