Mourning Practices on the Internet

The article presents the results of our URPP subproject "Mourning Practices on the Internet", in which four linguists collaborated. Following our disciplinary background, the aim of the project was to explore how feelings of grief after a tragic event are expressed on the internet, what linguistic and visual means of expression are used, and how this form of online mourning is reported in the media (i.e. in newspapers). A particular focus was placed on the question of religious references found in the data we examined. Such references are expected in the context of death and mourning; the project investigated how these references are explicitly established. While other studies are predominantly in English, our research centers on German-language data. The article presents selected results from our qualitative and quantitative analyses and highlights how closely offline and online mourning practices are intertwined in our digitally permeated world.