This paper aims to shed light on two online phenomena in the contemporary Swedish context – blogs about terminal illness and support groups for bereaved online – and explore what they mean for those who chose to share their vulnerability online. We will show that in the shadow of the grand interruption – the moment when the life narrative itself is cut off because of imminent death or sudden loss – the studied online activities of mourners and the illness stricken, but also and more profoundly, the internet itself become literal lifelines, both individual and collective.

Studying various renditions of life line communication both enables and requires a re-conceptualization of our culture of connectivity as an existential and ambivalent terrain, in which we need to re-envision the media user as a vulnerable, relational and mortal exister (Lagerkvist 2016). With Web 2.0 death has returned to everyday life (Walter et al 2011/2012, Christensen & Sandvik 2014). But since the studied practices are dominated by women, they furthermore interrupt a type of masculinist tenancy of the ‘existential’. They partake in what Karl Jaspers (1932/1970) calls a truly ‘existential elucidation’ in both words and deeds, but also importantly through ‘affective encounters’ online. While we maintain that the ‘existential’ can bring important issues to the table in the debates surrounding digital media, we see the need to bring it into conjunction with our contemporary digital times, by forging perspectives from humanism and posthumanism into a productive if not tensionless conversation. In fact, for scholarship in the burgeoning field of death online, which focalizes the posthuman condition in a ‘thanatosensitive’ manner, debates on affect that stress the processual and vital character of being, and downplay death as overrated in human existence (Braidott 2010), evoke several questions: What of the end? What is the status of limits within the affective turn? And what can be said about suffering and inevitable death – the grand interruption – in this lively debate?

Since the accidental death of his infant son in 2016, this individual has engaged in a diverse array of online and offline work, directing his grief into theological reflection, public health advocacy and memory work. I will focus particularly on his use of Facebook, where he engages with an audience of many thousands of followers, and my analysis will be supported by interviews and conversations with the individual himself. We will use the work of Doka and Martin (2010) on grief and gender to explore how fatherhood is constructed in this communicative work. We will also reflect on the distinctive religious dimensions of this construction. 

As we shall see, this Christian individual draws on his experience of loss to position himself as a source of religious authority and pragmatic expertise. Through the hyper-publicity afforded by social media, he presents himself to his large online audience not just as a grieving father but as one who speaks with fresh insight about God and parenting.       

Background: Digital communication on the internet has radically changed the possibilities for people to manage and communicate different types of grief. The ability to communicate virtually around the clock, to receive and provide emphatic support, to share experiences and to discuss taboo and stigmatized issues are key factors as to why bereaved people join digital grief groups. Some aspects of grief appear to be especially poignant after a suicide, such as shame, guilt, shock and rejection, which in some cases can lead to complicated and disenfranchised grief.

Aim: To examine how bereaved people are affected by shame after a relative’s/close friend’s suicide.

Methods & Material: A web based survey was made available on a suicide bereaved organisations website and Facebook group. The final sample consisted of a total of 327 bereaved respondents. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse the responses.

Results: Two thirds of the respondents used digital resources in their grief work. The respondents showed very high values for all perceived negative consequences after the relative’s suicide (e.g. depressive mood, meaninglessness, anxiety) except for shame, which was rated relatively low. A plausible explanation could be that the increased communication about suicide and its underlying causes on the internet have contributed to reduce the shame, taboo and stigma, at least for the participants in the present study, who to a majority were users of digital resources living in the ‘secular’ Global North. This was also present in the qualitative thematic analysis, where the respondents pointed to that communicating about suicide bereavement on the internet have had a ‘normalizing’ effect on the subject.

Conclusion: The observed reduction of shame and stigma can have an impact on disenfranchised grief, in that the grief after a suicide gradually may be more socially accepted and sanctioned.     

In the age of social media, there are social networks for mourners as well. “Forever with us” (‪www.vechnosnami.ru) is however the only existing online memorial website for the Russian speaking world. Aside from allowing users to create memorials, it offers a variety of interaction possibilities. The absolute majority of its users are women who lost their children. They talk to each other in a very encouraging and sentimental style, however in practice, their communication is less of a constructive dialogue, but instead an exchange of presents, poetry, and pictures. The symbolical language of this network of bereaved mothers is special: the usual subjects are heaven, angels, sun, rain, flowers, tears, sweets, hearts and candles. Using the virtual currency mourners boost their memorials to the top of the main page, and present the deceased ones with their favorite pastries, or brands of perfume. My presentation will follow the history of Russian death culture from archaic traditions of female mourners to the silent Soviet male funeral ceremony administrators, and, finally, to the latemodern age of digital grief, where nothing is a taboo (Walter 1991). On “Forever with us” all types of mourning are acceptable, as far as there is someone who “likes” the newly published angel, lights a candle, and adds a memorial to “favorites”, creating an effect of constant connectivity (Hoskins 2009), and thus forming a peculiar picture of vernacular religion online (Bowman & Valk 2012).

I first review examples of grieving death and memorializing life online, including striking new forms of healing and comfort, as well as examples of people abandoning social media in favor of “real life” grief.  These link with broader developments. One, in both religious and existential traditions, acknowledging our mortality is essential to our creating our identity, relationships, and sense of meaning. Here I highlight recent work in the DIGMEX project, as focusing precisely on “the existential terrains” of meaning and memory in a digital era. Two, these existential turns cohere with the renaissance of virtue ethics and feminist ethics of care in Information and Computing Ethics, ICT design, and Digital Religion.

Next, I sketch similar connections with two larger turns, beginning towards a “post-digital” era as one that restores attention to the core roles of “the analogue” and feminist emphases on embodiment – explicitly countering Augustinian / Cartesian dualisms defining 1990s’ celebrations of the virtual as divorced from body and contemporary transhumanist dreams of digital immortality.  Two, the return of body, existenz, and mortality likewise counter broader Baconian and Cartesian visions of modern science and technology as restoring a Paradise free of labor, pain in childbirth, and death (again as defined by Augustine).

The reappearance of death online is thus a salutary turn away from largely destructive dualisms and the hybris of modern technologies, in favor of embracing our mortality, affirming the goodness of our existenz as embodied beings, and cultivating the virtues coherent with these, beginning with loving itself.