Mourning on Social Networks

Posted by Sara Hebert at 4:52 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

(Note: This post originally appeared on PopandPolitics.com.)

After the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, many members of social networking sites changed their profile pictures to a VT ribbon, in honor of the victims of the shooting. The ribbon often appeared in either black or maroon, symbolizing either mourning for the dead or support for the VT community. When the shootings at Northern Illinois University took place last week, NIU memorial ribbons similarly became widespread on Facebook and MySpace. Being a "Huskie," the school's mascot, was not only a meaningful label for NIU students, faculty and staff, but suddenly also for the extended community that radiated out from NIU memorial groups and the friends and families of the victims.

The shared visual language of these two tragedies, signals more generally how we are approaching mourning online. The images of the ribbon and the mascot are quickly and easily reproducible in a digital environment, creating what could be considered a "brand" of mourning. In an environment where copying and pasting is a regular act of creation, survivor guilt becomes easier to address. Being public about one's guilt or mourning has always been an important part of moving forward after a loss. The cross-cultural ancient rituals surrounding death -- dressing and viewing the deceased, the celebration of life, the placing of markers at gravesites -- are ways for mourners to participate publicly in moving forward.

The act of memorialization is the first step in a form of forgetting, each distinct practice of mourning being a stylization of a culture's particular needs. In these cases, joining in the online visual culture of mourning appears to play an important role in dealing with survivor guilt, giving internet users a simple way to express their grief. Many of the Facebook and MySpace users changing their profile pictures this week, for example, are not members of the immediate NIU community.

Using corporate language and branding tactics nonetheless may be less than ideal, as it expresses noncommercial mourning and guilt in a readymade language of commodity advertisement. The juxtaposition is at once disconcerting and entirely natural. In the case of the school shootings, the corporate university brands are more than familiar; they are the iconic images of a carefully wrought visual culture of power, strength and courage. On a very basic level, they convey what needs conveying and so they rose to the top of the great mix of our ever-expanding digital raw material.

What is particularly interesting about the Facebook and MySpace community's response to the NIU Shootings is the rapid production of these spaces and user-created media about the shootings. The Facebook group Pray for Northern Illinois University Students and Families was created a mere hour and a half after the shootings occurred and membership rose exponentially, to 103,358 members a mere two days after its inception.

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