To life, to death: Mourning in a community of amateurs

Abstract

This paper focuses on the specificity of interactions in a group of mourning created within a community of amateurs in a sociodigital network. It allows to observe that on the creation of a post-mortem digital identity of the deceased constituting at the discretion of tributes is articulated with emphasis of memories, thoughts and affects also participating to the presentation of themselves and the bereaved. The comparison of the main results of analysis of this group with those of 4 other groups without community link, highlights that, in spite of the fame of the deceased, the collective dimension of the identity is more at stake than the individual dimension when the mourning is made within a community.

Keywords

• amateur
• bereavement
• community
• identity