The Effect of Grief Expression on Instagram on Users' Digital Empathy and Emotional Response
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35335/psychologia.v4i2.86Keywords:
Digital Empathy, Grief Expression, Instagram, Online Mourning, Emotional ContagionAbstract
This study explores how grief is expressed and empathized with on Instagram, focusing on the dynamics of digital mourning and emotional contagion within visual storytelling. As social media becomes a prominent platform for public and personal expressions of loss, understanding the emotional interactions that arise from such content is critical. Employing a mixed-methods approach including content analysis of grief-related Instagram posts and interviews with active users the research investigates how users respond emotionally to visual and textual expressions of mourning. The findings reveal that posts incorporating photos or videos tend to elicit stronger empathic engagement than text-only posts, with users who frequently interact with grief-related content demonstrating higher levels of digital empathy. The study also highlights the role of online mourning communities in providing emotional support and fostering shared healing experiences. These insights contribute to the growing discourse on digital empathy, affective communication, and the evolving rituals of grief in online spaces, offering implications for platform design, mental health support, and cultural understandings of mourning in the digital age.
References
Bergerot, C. D. (2013). A Preliminary Perspective of Distress Prevalence by Diagnosis and Disease Stage in a Sample of Brazilian Cancer Patients. Psycho-Oncology.
Blasco-Arcas, L., Hernandez-Ortega, B. I., & Jimenez-Martinez, J. (2016). Engagement platforms: The role of emotions in fostering customer engagement and brand image in interactive media. Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 26(5), 559–589.
Castleberry, A., & Nolen, A. (2018). Thematic analysis of qualitative research data: Is it as easy as it sounds? Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 10(6), 807–815.
Chen, Y., & Xu, Y. (2021). Exploring the effect of social support and empathy on user engagement in online mental health communities. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(13), 6855.
Corrigan, O. (2003). Empty ethics: the problem with informed consent. Sociology of Health & Illness, 25(7), 768–792.
Cristani, M., Vinciarelli, A., Segalin, C., & Perina, A. (2013). Unveiling the multimedia unconscious: Implicit cognitive processes and multimedia content analysis. Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 213–222.
Döveling, K. (2017). Online emotion regulation in digitally mediated bereavement. Why age and kind of loss matter in grieving online. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(1), 41–57.
Entilli, L., & Cipolletta, S. (2021). Live-chats in postvention: an analysis of interventions with people bereaved by suicide. In Book of abstracts CYPSY25-) Settembre.
Ip, V. (2021). Intergenerational User Experience with Digital Memorial Artefacts. Carleton University.
Ivankova, N. V, Creswell, J. W., & Stick, S. L. (2006). Using mixed-methods sequential explanatory design: From theory to practice. Field Methods, 18(1), 3–20.
Kowalczyk, C. M., & Pounders, K. R. (2016). Transforming celebrities through social media: the role of authenticity and emotional attachment. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 25(4), 345–356.
Kwon, S., Choi, E., Kim, M., Hwang, S., Kim, D., & Kang, Y. (2021). What happens to my Instagram account after I die? Re-imagining social media as a commemorative space for remembrance and recovery. IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 449–467.
Manikonda, L., Hu, Y., & Kambhampati, S. (2014). Analyzing user activities, demographics, social network structure and user-generated content on Instagram. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:1410.8099.
McNamara, K. (2007). Blogging breast cancer: language and subjectivity in women’s online illness narratives.
Moore, J., Magee, S., Gamreklidze, E., & Kowalewski, J. (2019). Social media mourning: Using grounded theory to explore how people grieve on social networking sites. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 79(3), 231–259.
Moran, G., Muzellec, L., & Johnson, D. (2020). Message content features and social media engagement: evidence from the media industry. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 29(5), 533–545.
Pardo, R., & Morcate, M. (2016). Illness, death and grief: the daily experience of viewing and sharing digital Images. In Digital photography and everyday life (pp. 70–85). Routledge.
Richardson, J., & Milovidov, E. (2019). Digital citizenship education handbook: Being online, well-being online, and rights online. Council of Europe.
Sherr-Pollard, S. A. (2001). Visual representation and the prediction of emotion. University of Pennsylvania.
Spreng*, R. N., McKinnon*, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(1), 62–71.
Tan, J., & Andriessen, K. (2021). The experiences of grief and personal growth in university students: a qualitative study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 1899.
Tuluk, T. (2021). The impact of brand posts and visuality on customer engagement behavior: A study of Instagram brand accounts. Marmara Universitesi (Turkey).
Walter, T. (2015). New mourners, old mourners: Online memorial culture as a chapter in the history of mourning. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 21(1–2), 10–24.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ray Olwin Grisel
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
