Moa Eriksson Krutrök, Associate professor at Department of Culture and Media Studies
Moa will present a draft for a book chapter in an upcoming anthology entitled 'International Handbook of Child and Adolescent Losses in Contemporary Context'. You will need to register to receive the text.
Through social media, youth can reflect on their relationship with a deceased loved one and prolong an attachment with the deceased in meaningful ways (Williams & Merten 2009). Social media may fill a role in sharing tributes, memorialisations and advocacy for their loved ones. This chapter focuses on playfulness and creativity in grief expressions on TikTok within the framework of memefication and connectivity among youth in socially mediated spaces. Of TikTok’s 1 billion monthly active users, roughly two-thirds of its user base is between 10 to 29 years old (Wallaroo Media, 2022). This high concentration of youths on the platform indicates a necessity to understand its user base further, especially in communities dealing with existential issues. This chapter provides evidence of the sociotechnical functions (van Dijck & Poell, 2013) of youths’ digital expressions of mourning on TikTok and the role of playfulness in defining and expanding societal norms of mourning. In this digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) of user-generated content dealing with grief, I will analyse content produced by this community and give specific examples from two TikTok accounts posting content that has gained attention on the platform. By allowing the studied accounts opportunities to opt-in, we have attempted to give “respect for and sympathy with” (in this case, content creators’) “desire to construct their understanding of their lives and practice”, in addition to their possible desire for privacy (Bridges, 2009:120). While mourning could be understood as a situational vulnerability, I consider how their work can be a form of norm-breaking and activist work, which needs to be accredited and acknowledged.
