Collective Grief Storytelling as a Form of Social Media Therapy @GhenghisKhan01

Abstract

Grief autobiography is a form of storytelling where the narrator tells personal stories of hurt and loss. Art-based research is used to explore the author’s personal grief and how it is implicated in the grief of @GhenghisKhan01 and that of other netizens. This article examines @GhenghisKhan01’s tweets about grief as an intersection of social media grief storytelling and therapy as referential to the author’s personal loss. This study analyses @GhenghisKhan01’s autobiographical tweets of 19 March 2022, about the death of his father and other responses to similar autobiographical tweets that others tweeted under his, forming a thematic thread of responses to grief and loss that has 4,355 retweets, 837 quotes, 13.7k likes, which represent the content of participatory grief autobiographical narratives. This study accounts for how the researcher is implicated in this grief. The study examines the style and functions of Twitter grief storytelling from a referential point of view. This study conclude that autobiographical grief narratives shared on social media as posted by @Ghenghiskhan01, serves as a medium for both personal emotional expression and collective mourning.