Death and bereavement in the internet age : online mourning on heavenaddress.com in shaping bereavement experience in Singapore

• Main Author: Lee, Grace Xiao En
• Other Authors: Sulfikar Amir
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66180
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In the analysis of 200 remembrance web profiles on heavenaddress.com, online mourning has demonstrated the Internet’s ability to facilitate a continuation of relationships through virtual means, even in physical separation through death. This has resulted in perception shifts in privacy and increasing acceptance of personal expressions of private detail and emotions. Remembrance web profiles are domains perceived by some as symbolically belonging to the deceased, with no expiration date to the nature and content of artefacts uploaded; for some, expressions of grief may be extended years following a loved one’s passing. Remembrance web profiles have also shifted conventionally private mourning into publicly accessible domains that can be revisited repeatedly, where identities and roles of social actors – both the deceased and bereaved members – are subject to continuous construction, even in post-mortem.