The grieving process on Facebook in Lebanon and its impact on the 5 stage of grief

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore how Facebook’s platform is used in the grieving practices in Lebanon. In addition, it is supposed to reveal whether or not it soothes the five stages of grief, introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross(1997): 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression, and 5) Acceptance, by incorporating the support of others. Results will show if a Lebanese virtual grieving outlet on Facebook is actually present and effective. Using variables such as feelings, the five stages of grief and gratification of human needs, two methods of research were used for this study, qualitative and quantitative, both based on a purposive sampling. First, one-on-one interviews were conducted and analyzed with six selected Lebanese Facebook users, who personally shared their grief on Facebook. Second, an online questionnaire was answered by 103 active Lebanese Facebook users, which helped in having some statistical frequencies of people and their usage of Facebook in times of grief. Ages of both interviewees and subjects ranged between 18 and 40. Findings described first how Facebook’s platform is used in the grieving practices in Lebanon: grieving people directed the message to the deceased and then to his/her family through mostly updating their status mentioning their name (41%), posting on the deceased wall (30%) and finally tagging him/her on pictures or videos (29%). They expressed grief and loss (23%), shared memories (22%) and also few mentioned frustration over death and important dates (such as the death anniversary, his/her birthday, etc.). The interviews confirm similar results. In addition, other Facebook users helped the grieving person by showing support, love and affection after commenting on the grieving person’s post or sharing their own feelings on the deceased’s wall. However, even though these findings were important, the survey has revealed that Facebook does not help much in soothing the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) (65%). Interviewees stated that it mostly helped sharing and thinking out loud and two have had their denial stage extended, which was surprisingly helpful as soon as the tragic event happened. However, it did not accelerate the process to get to the stage of acceptance. Hypothesis one is supported in survey 2: grieving people felt sad (64%) when exposed to a sudden appearance of a deceased friend such an old picture or their birthday date on Facebook. Hence, it is a platform capable of altering the feelings of the grieving person negatively. Hypothesis two is refuted: interviewees confirmed that visiting and interacting with the deceased loved one’s profile page on Facebook does not affect the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – in the sense of speeding up the grieving process and getting to the acceptance phase. However, surprisingly, two one-on-one interviewees claimed that it slowed down the five stages of grief, by extending the denial phase and allowing the tragic news to sink in slowly before actually facing it. In addition, four out of six of the interviewees and 56% of the subjects disagreed that when grieving on Facebook, friendships can develop, moving from shallow to intimate or more personal ones. Consequently, the six degrees of separation and the social penetration theory do not play a role in times of grief on Facebook in Lebanon. Hypothesis three is partially supported in both surveys: in grieving time, Facebook gratifies needs such as affection, support and love. It backs up the uses and gratification theory by Blumler and Katz (1974), which suggests that media users seek on out a medium that best fulfills the needs of the user. On another hand, results showed that Facebook is not seen as a substitute or a supplement for counseling or group comforting sessions. A Lebanese virtual grieving outlet on Facebook is actually present but not as effective as it should be, the way it is described by western Facebook users in their testimonials.