My Golden Carrot Talk: Expressions of Grief in the Digital Age

If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you know that people have taken to the platform for all sorts of reasons: to share photos that commemorate a special occasion, express their political views or even to express grief.

Social media has become a place where people can post on the profile page of someone who has died, celebrate their life by sharing stories about them or share a status update that asks for support while going through the process of grieving.

Death has always been something that has terrified me, but on Facebook I couldn’t look away from these interactions. It nagged at me as I applied to grad school, and even though I went into a program in Media Studies with the intention of focusing on something else, I ultimately decided to approach the topic head-on, researching how people express grief online and how they feel about interacting with someone’s personal profile that remains online. This research has remained relevant (think: funeral selfies) and continues to make me think differently about the tools we use every day in the PR industry.

In my Golden Carrot talk, I wanted to dig a little deeper and explore my own reasons for being interested in this topic. This video is a short look at my talk, but you can read the full story here. 

Click here to view InkHouse's full Golden Carrot video series.