Grief in the Time of Social Media

When someone is incarcerated, the pain extends far beyond the prison walls. Families and communities are left to endure a unique type of loss, one marked by the prolonged absence and persistent ambiguity surrounding their incarcerated loved one. This form of grief remains largely invisible, unsupported by formal structures that typically accompany loss.

So how do people cope? 

A new paper by SAFElab co-directors Aviv Y. Landau and Desmond Upton Patton examine this using examples from gang-affiliated Black youth on social media. The paper, titled “Digital Ambiguous Loss and Incarceration: Multimodal Analysis of Image-Based Posts Among Gang-Affiliated Black Youth,” published in Social Media + Society, looks at several instances on X (formerly Twitter) to understand how youth are grieving online. 

The authors, based at the Annenberg School for Communication and SP2 at the University of Pennsylvania, including incoming doctoral student Shana Kleiner, collaborated with Dr. Nathan Aguilar at the NYU Silver School of Social Work to focus on “ambiguous loss,” or grief unrelated to death, and considers the experience of incarceration through the lens of social media. They see digital media as a “a space for processing ambiguous loss, memorializing loved ones, and cultivating emotional survival.” It’s a locale critically left out by existing scholarship. 

“Incarceration is especially crucial to ambiguous loss research because of its deep-rooted entanglement with the historical and intergenerational trauma of slavery, segregation, and system racism,” Patton, the 31st PIK University Professor at Annenberg, with appointments at Annenberg and the School of Social Policy & Practice, says. “We see this unresolved grief and forced separations, now typified by incarceration, playing out on social media.” 

To examine this phenomenon, the researchers center Gakirah Barnes, a 17-year-old gang-affiliated youth from Chicago’s South Side, who created an account to memorialize her friend who was killed by a rival gang. Patton, with colleagues from Columbia University, compiled almost 5,000 tweets authored or retweeted by Gakirah, along with nearly a 1,000 tweets from her community, to study expressions of grief and trauma. It was further informed by discussions with people who have experienced or have connections to gang-involved communities in Chicago. 

From this subset, the posts they examine — particularly those which included selfies, group photos, screenshots, portraits, emojis, and text — show how youth are “advocating and memorializing their incarcerated loved ones on social media,” says Research Assistant Professor Landau, “allowing them to reflect and share their experiences with communities online.”

One example shows a group of men outside on a hot summer day, clearly having a good time, with a caption that says “Free big Cuzz my dude a real one 😫😫🔒🔒.” The authors see this not only as an “act of remembrance” but also as a transformation of “loss into a source of strength, mobilizing support and solidarity within the community.”

“These types of multimodal posts navigate the complexity of incarceration and ambiguous loss, intertwining expressions of pain and mourning with affirmations of joy, solidarity, and community,” Landau says.

Another post shows how social media platforms allow for event-based grieving, like those we’re familiar with in traditional loss. On the birthday of his incarcerated friend, a user posted a photo of them together with the caption “Happy birthday big bro free my boy DINERO.” 

“This photo, coupled with the emotional text, serves as a powerful testament to the enduring relationships and memories that persist even in the face of incarceration…as it commemorates the significant time that has passed and the continued emotional connection and advocacy for the friend’s release,” the authors write.

These posts are unique products of digital media in the way they frequently using hashtags like “#free,” sharing photos, and using emojis like 🔒to leverage the social media to advocate for their loved ones and ensure visibility. 

“Again and again, we find youth are adapting to ambiguous loss using digital technologies,” Patton says. “It's a ripe subject for future studies which can expand their analysis to different populations and platforms.” 

The authors also point to collecting data over longer periods to track how online grieving practices evolve, as well as engaging directly with youth who use social media to navigate grief. Increasingly, this is where grief lives and it’s important to not just recognize it but to study it — and make what has long been invisible a little less ambiguous.