Mourning network: ethnography and new social

practices in on-line communities

Dr. Alessandra Micalizzi IULM University – Communication Dept

http://medianthropology.myblog.it

EASA – Media Anthropology WorkshopMedia Practices and cultural production, Barcelona

6-7 november 2008

Start point in Theory

Social context: Expulsion of death from

everyday life conversations (life story)

obscene-zation of death on traditional media (mediated-narrations)

Pornography of death (Gorer)

The Net as a social context

The Net – as socio techno artefact - is: A narrative technology

writing about self and reading after time (reflexive-ness

Bruner) An interactive technology

interacting with other netusers exchanging experiences expose personal story to the glance of

other surfers A memory technology

storing contents consulting archives of other life-stories

The research: goals

Could the Net be considered as a new social context where people can share personal experience of loss and mourning?

In the case of blogs and virtual communities we would know:

• Motivations and expectations• Practices of uses• Functions (of the single digital environment

and of the Net)

Methodology

Qualitative analysis of the content (phase I): contextual textual

Web-overt observations of specific interactions in digital environments (forum-blog)

E-mail interviews with (phase II): Web-users of “memorial” websites Net-users of web communities (forum and blogs)

about loss and mourning Administrators, facilitators

Opening of a blog about research www.ricercathanatosinrete.splinder.com

MethodologyMore in dept:

E-mail interview• Recit de vie expectation and reason why• Use relational dynamics (management of the time spent

in these spaces, writing, reading etc)• Functions of the net contextualization of the on-line

experience

Over observation• First contact of cultural mediator (blogger or moderator)• Introductions to the community (as a researcher)• Interactions and observations

Sample

Observations and content analysis : 15 blogs 17 “memorial” websites (11 virtual

cemeteries) 6 forums(total 250 websites)

Interviews : 32 net-users of forums 15 bloggers 12 memorial websites users (3 administrators)

Recruitments and time

Content analysis: Search with key-words

Interviews: E-mail contact (through cultural mediator) Reporting or auto-reporting on my blog

Period: February- July 2007

The results

1. Motivations and expectations

Supported by the Net: first attempt

We explore by the content analysis and the e-mail interviews the reason why of the first access:

Why do they enter on the web?

Personal answer to the isolation percieved by the bereaved person from the social context (out of the Net):

• Desired and searched (pro-active attitude)

• suffered (passive attitude)

Supported by the Net: first attempt

Searching for a context where to feel protected:

• Protection of the screen

• Meeting in a familiar environment

• Filter for personal exposition of the self identity

Supported by the Net: first attempt

Searching for a “place” where to share personal experience:

Telling personal mourning’s story Comparing feelings Not feel the only one

How they arrived to…

In the case of web community: By a key word search Falling down (as they usually

say) on the linkThere is a personal (psychological)

need but not a specific project

In the case of weblog: generally as a second step after

the attending of other kind of digital environment (especially forum and chat)

Guided by specific digital skills

…With which expectations“just do it”

All the interviewees – both blogger of net-users of communities - declared that: They hadn’t any peculiar expectation on using

these environments

SO

They are very surprised by the pseudo therapeutic effects of the partecipations

They would just to feel again GOOD

The results

2. Blogs and web communities

Web-community partecipation

5 steps:

1. Setting

2. Introduction

3. Participation

4. Empowerment

5. Exit from the community

• Abandonment

• Lurking

• Mature exit

Weblog partecipation

Setting Max writing interaction Reducing writing activity Exit

Abandonment Changing the argument lurking

Functions

Containing

Therapeutic

Sharing

Memory

Private sphere

Public sphere

Conclusions

3. The answer to our question

Yes or Not?

We start from this question:

Could the Net be considered as a new social context where people can share personal experience of loss and mourning?

We think we can answer affirmatively: The Net is a new socio-anthropological context

where give a “space” to the experience of loss

The macro-functions of the Net

4 functions:

Social function

Psychological function

Pedagogical function

Anthropological function

…and a meta function

The need of presence (Di Fraia, 2007):

«The fear the loss of presence (…) is the ancestral fear that always accompanies humanity(…) Behind the click that allows us to publish our thoughts, behind such a beautiful but also banal gesture, there is, conscious or not, our desire to counteract our destiny; that is, to leave a visible sign on this Earth; to produce a sign that can be alive, that could survive for longer than us».