Digital Mourning as Collective Psychosocial Support
A Descriptive Phenomenology of Technologically Mediated Grief in a Collectivist Context
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24225354 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marc Kenneth F Cabañero (0009-0003-6664-4677, University of Santo Tomas Hospital) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 302228261496814-302228261496814 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00302228261496814 |
| PMID | 42858229 |
| OpenAlex | W7221324785 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
This study examines digital mourning as collective psychosocial support in a collectivist context. Using Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, it reanalyzes interviews with ten Filipino Facebook users who expressed grief online. The analysis explicates how digital environments constitute shared empathy, moral participation, and affective solidarity as lived relational processes. Findings show that digital mourning is not merely a supportive environment but a relational–spiritual praxis through which grief is enacted as psychosocial support. Structured through technological affordances such as immediacy, visibility, and persistence, digital mourning enables relational connectedness, emotional co-regulation, and communal healing. It functions as a mediated relational space that sustains co-presence, reciprocity, and continuity. The study advances community psychology and digital mental health research by reframing digital mourning as a relationally constituted practice of care. It demonstrates how online platforms support resilience, social connectedness, and psychological well-being, offering culturally responsive insights for bereavement support, psychosocial intervention, and grief-support design across contexts.
affective solidarity · bereavement support · Collectivism · community healing · digital mental health · digital mourning · Facebook · relational connectedness · technology affordances · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
Phenomenological research methods
What Things Do
Technology and the Lifeworld
New mourners, old mourners
A Social Constructionist Account of Grief
The Lived Experiences of Bereaved Filipino Families of the Deceased Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Death and Dying in a Digitalized World
He’s Still There”
Religious communication and technology
The grand interruption
Automatic and automated mourning
Beyond the Grave
Digital mourning on Facebook
By sharing our loss, we fight
Digitalizing Grief
Digital Mourning as Psychospiritual Care
Filipino Psychology Is a Transpersonal Psychology
Naturalistic inquiry
Death Immortalized
Grief
Bracketing in Qualitative Research
Ten Tips for Reflexive Bracketing
Death and grief on-line
Thematic Analysis and Artificial Intelligence
How Many Interviews Are Enough
Living with the deceased
Back-Translation for Cross-Cultural Research
| Highly cited | No |
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