“You’re Just Playing the Victim”: Online Grieving and the Non-use of Social Media in Italy

Abstract

Studies on death and digital media all agree that social media have changed how we mourn. However, they also highlight a considerable resistance to using social media in grieving. This article explores these resistances in greater depth based on a national research project on the Italian population (400 in-depth interviews and a representative survey) that includes non-users in the research into online death practices. Our theoretical framework is the paradigm of media and information and communications technologies (ICTs) domestication in everyday life and the study of the mediation of death from a socio-constructivist and non-platform/media-centric perspective. The article focuses on the findings of the interviews. Our research questions are as follows: What are the reasons for refusing or resisting social media use when mourning? Which type of social media domestication characterizes Italian users? How has social media changed the way we mourn? Online grieving emerges as a profitable area to study the resistance to and domestication of social media in everyday life. Social media are accepted differently in the various stages of the loss process. The most ritualized practices, like death announcements and condolences, are relatively approved. Instead, displays of grief online and, especially, the interaction with the digital remains of the dead are controversial. Social media have enhanced the everyday public visibility of death and bereavement and the public presence of the dead. However, social media have neither triggered a significant expansion of the enfranchisement of public displays of grief nor of continuing bonds online—not even in Italy.