Leina väljendamine internetikeskkonnas Youtube

Abstract

Expressing Grief in Internet Community YouTube. The essence and phases of grief, different ways of expressing grief, reactions to deaths and grief, factors that increase grief and various ways to commemorate the deceased were brought out in the present bachelor thesis. Moreover, the author gave an overview of changes in the death culture in Estonia. The reactions showed in the theoretical part were based on books, which were compiled at the time when the Internet and its different possibilities were not yet a part of our every day lives, therefore it was not possible to show reactions to grief in Internet environments in the theoretical part, so the theory was based on grief reactions from real life. The author hopes, that as the Internet is a relatively new environment where to express grief, research and books on the topic will be available soon. The author based the thesis on a question “How is grief expressed in Internet community YouTube?”. The ways to express grief, texts accompanying memorial videos, and lastly the commentaries on them were focused on. To compare and find parallels between traditional and contemporary ways of expressing grief the author also used Seto lamentations. The author tried to find out what the videos consist of. The author used quantitative and qualitative content analysis to study thirty different memorial videos, comments on each video and ten Seto lamentations. The answers to the research questions and conclusions reached are looked at below: 1. Firstly the author wanted to know what the ways to express grief in Internet community YouTube are. As the community enables to upload videos, very many have used the opportunity to compile a memorial video about the deceased close one and express their thoughts using texts accompanying memorial videos. The second possibility to express grief is to comment on the videos. The third possibility YouTube enables is to grade the comments accordingly “like” or “don’t like”. It seemed that several grievers used the last possibility to share similar thoughts. The author of the paper thinks that such way of grieving helps people express their feelings and that way get through the grieving process. 2. Secondly, the author tried to find out what the griever is trying to say and express. Content analysis showed that using the texts accompanying the videos, commentaries, and lamentations the grievers can express their sorrow and heartache caused by the death of a close person. With that the authors of the video in general turned to the deceased one to describe their feelings and sorrow, and remember things they had in common, to say how important the deceased was for that person. The grievers expressed their changed worldview where they understood that death is finite and their lives will go on without the deceased one. The videos somehow conveyed the feeling that the deceased might have a chance to see them. The deceased were remembered with kind words only. The photos used in the videos mostly depicted the deceased; both the photos and background music in the videos show respect towards the deceased. Compiling a memorial video is a symbolic activity to remember the deceased one which helps the author the ease the grief. Creative activity and nonverbal expression relieve stress and offer ways to express thoughts and impressions. 3. Lastly, the author tried to discover what parallels between traditional and 21st century ways of expressing grief can be found. Both, the videos and lamentations studied say that using verbal expression in different eras the grievers appraised their loss and sorrow by turning to the deceased and expressing their own thoughts. The grievers seemed to believe that the deceased could still see or hear them, although they knew that the deceased life on earth had finished. The difference between lamentations and YouTube memorial videos is that the first ones depicted what the deceased could do well whereas the videos showed what kind of person the deceased had been. Also the Seto lamentations do not contain condolences or saying goodbye to the deceased. However, YouTube videos had both. In general, the ways of expressing grief studied in the thesis give the griever an opportunity to concentrate the feelings caused by death. At the same time they are a great way to pay respect to the deceased and say goodbye. The grieving process is a creative activity and writing lamentations or compiling videos can be an emotionally healing process for the griever.