Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster

Oring, Elliott

doi:10.2307/540324

Cited by 58 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…They articulate, in deliberately provocative ways, the reservations about "look at me" mourning, the social pressure to mourn online, that others may hold privately. Arguably, many trolls are attacking not individual mourners but online mourning norms (Phillips, 2011), in the way that "sick" disaster jokes comment on the incongruities and contradictions in media coverage of disaster (Oring, 1987). Unlike disaster jokes, however, attacks from online memorial trolls are more likely to be read by bereaved family members and therefore to cause personal offence.…”

Section: Conflictmentioning

confidence: 95%

New mourners, old mourners: online memorial culture as a chapter in the history of mourning

Walter

2014

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

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How does online mourning differ from offline mourning? Throughout history, demographic, social and technological changes have altered mourners' social relationships with both the living and the dead, and hence their experiences of grief. Online technologies comprise the latest chapter in this story; earlier chapters include family/community mourning (preindustrial), private mourning (twentieth century) and public mourning (turn of the millennium). Pervasive social media in which users generate their own content have significantly shifted mourners' social interactions and the norms that govern them, partly in new directions (such as enfranchising previously stigmatised griefs; more potential for conflict between mourners and others) but partly returning to something more like the relationships of the preindustrial village (such as everyday awareness of mortality, greater use of religious imagery, more potential for conflict among mourners). Online, mourners can experience both greater freedom to be themselves and increased social pressure to conform to group norms as to who should be mourned and how.Online memorial culture is both a form of online culture, and a form of mourning and memorialising. This article examines it as the latter, sketching a brief history of mourning in order to show how online mourning both differs from, and does not differ from, offline mourning. Specifically, I will show how demographic, social and technological changes in recent centuries have changed mourners' social relationships with both the living and the dead, and hence their experiences of grief; online technologies comprise the latest chapter in this story. The first (1990s) generation of specialised online groups and virtual cemeteries changed surprisingly little, but from the mid-2000s social media's user generated content, together with its mobile technology-enabled pervasiveness, has been as significant as urbanisation and industrialisation in changing mourners' social relationships, not least in partially reverting to pre-industrial modes of mourning.

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Section: Conflictmentioning

confidence: 95%

New mourners, old mourners: online memorial culture as a chapter in the history of mourning

Walter

2014

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

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“…Similarly, Elliott Oring, (1987) has suggested that disaster jokes challenge the media-dominated definition of the world.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Arbiters of Truth at Play: Media April Fools' Day Hoaxes

Smith¹

2009

Folklore

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“…4 Owing to such quandaries that go with the attempts at defining humor and the problem of identifying the trigger for it, many authors have turned towards other, not so "eternal" questions, such as those pertaining to different forms of humor. This movement has been led especially by folklorists, who have taken a great interest in jokes with a wide variety of subjects, from racial and ethnic stereotypes (Ben-Amos 1973;Dégh 1982;Eben Sackett 1987) and sexist humor (Mitchell 1977;Lynn Preston 1994;Thomas 1997) to catastrophes and forms of black humor (Dundes 1979;Smyth 1986;Oring 1987;Ellis 2001).…”

Section: What Is Humor Actually?mentioning

confidence: 99%