Affective positioning in hyper-mourning: sharers as tellers, co-tellers and witnesses

Abstract

In an age of social and digital media, users’ engagements with (social) media related to death, dying and mourning vary widely across different social and cultural contexts and changing platforms. Based on the discussion of selected examples, I illustrate how users’ social media engagements related to death, dying and mourning vary, depending on the narrative positions that sharers take up as tellers, co-tellers or witnesses to shared stories. As I will argue, the potential and limits of such engagements can be better understood in the context of three over-arching, dynamic modes of practices of hyper-mourning, namely entrepreneurial, connective and activist. These are associated with distinct types of affective positions for sharers, audiences and displays of affect, forming the basis for projecting participants’ identity and affective claims. The article shows how the way we die and mourn is extended as much as limited by social and digital media story affordances and norms.