An Uncharted Liminality: The Transformative Impact of Social Media On Mourning in the Digital Age

Every day, approximately 8,000 Facebook users die worldwide, leaving behind an online reflection of their lives on the platform. Their digital remains are transforming platforms like Facebook into memorial spaces for the deceased and communal places of mourning for the bereaved. By employing an extensive scoping review of current scholarly literature, this paper aims to examine the current discourse surrounding digital mourning and evaluate the influence of social media platforms on mourning practices within the Western context. These findings illustrate how social media platforms support the grief work of individuals and communities through the exploration of frameworks that conceptualize mourning and memoria in the digital age.