science

Online mourning

Online mourning is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Online mourning rather than just read about it. In short: Online mourning describes grieving on the internet. It represents not a revolution in mourning, but rather a shift in the medium mourners utilize to express their grief and memorialize the deceased.

Key takeaways

Online mourning belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Online mourning to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Online mourning from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Online mourning describes grieving on the internet. It represents not a revolution in mourning, but rather a shift in the medium mourners utilize to express their grief and memorialize the deceased. This shift has occurred in tandem with the widespread popularity of social media in the West, a result of which has been the need for users to accept death within an online environment. It is estimated that by 2012, 30 million Facebook users had died. Online mourning does not occur exclusively on social media websites. There are websites such as Memories.net and Legacy.com dedicated to hosting obituaries and capturing the life stories of deceased loved ones. Two distinct types of online mourning have been identified, high-profile cases that draw attention from a broad online community, and profiles posthumously recreated and reframed as a medium to memorialize the deceased.

History Since the advent of newspapers, the obituary became a preferred method of memorializing the deceased. Until recently, obituaries were one of the most read sections of the newspaper. As new media technologies such as radio and television were created, the obituary adapted to best reflect capabilities available in the new communication media. Authors Brian Carroll and Katie Landry have argued that the appearance of online mourning reflects a logical progress of mourning via social media networks through use of new media. Changes to the obituary as it adapts over media include an exponential increase in information about the deceased, and the content reaching a wider geographic audience. The occurrence of online mourning presents a new paradigm in the memorialization process by providing interactive, sometimes competitive documents for mourners. Studies of Facebook and Myspace indicate that while the majority of living users visit memorialized profile accounts immediately after learning of an individual’s death, visitation often continues long after, albeit less frequently. There have been so many cases of online memorialization that it has resulted in the creation of websites such as MyDeathSpace.com, which attempt to create a catalogue of memorializations available on social media websites. Dead users with active profiles became problematic due to the inability of social media algorithms to recognize a user is deceased. In 2009, Facebook addressed this issue updating its policy to include an outline for handling user deaths through switching dead users’ profiles to memorial statuses.

Interaction with the deceased As previously mentioned, online mourning presents a new aspect of mourning by allowing users to interact with the memorialization of the deceased. By posting to a memorialized individual, mourners can celebrate the life of the deceased, connect to each other, and facilitate closure. Studies of mourners’ interactions with memorialized profile pages have identified distinct themes of interaction with the deceased:

Cursory comments that provide digital tokens of mourning Admiration or praise of the deceased Petitioning the deceased for guidance Narrative or biographical record of the deceased Describing and reinforcing the values of the deceased

See also Find a Grave – allows online memorials and tributes

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Online mourning

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Online mourning claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Online mourning before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Online mourning ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Online mourning

In research: Online mourning appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Online mourning in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Online mourning is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Death customs, Internet culture, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Online mourning outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Online mourning in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Online mourning means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Online mourning out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Online mourning in simple terms?

Online mourning describes grieving on the internet. It represents not a revolution in mourning, but rather a shift in the medium mourners utilize to express their grief and memorialize the deceased.

Why does Online mourning matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Online mourning?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Online mourning.