Sharing grief on the Internet
Postings can bring outpouring of support from strangers
Local artist Aaron Paquette took to Facebook Thursday to air his frustrations and grief about a vehicle accident that left his wife seriously injured and in hospital.
She was jogging near her home at the corner of Brintnell Boulevard and 47th Street Wednesday when two vehicles collided before one struck her as she crossed the street with a jogging partner.
The mother of a one-yearold has broken bones, a lacerated liver and other injuries. Paquette decided to share the story on Facebook. By late afternoon Friday, his post had been shared 50,070 times and almost 13,500 comments were left on the post, offering prayers and commiseration.
“The post was written to explain the situation to family, friends and the good folks who read these updates. I was getting so many messages and calls, I couldn’t face the thought of repeating the story dozens of times. I did not expect it to be spread as far as it did,” Paquette wrote.
Professor Sree Sreenivasan, a social media expert at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, said people shouldn’t be surprised at either the public nature of the display or the public outpouring of support from strangers. Sreenivasan believes the same sort of thing has been going on in blogs and web postings for years.
“Facebook is just the next step for this and its also been happening for a while,” Sreenivasan said. “You find that people want their circle to know what they are thinking, and they’re posting it. It’s awkward for us to see this kind of terrible grief being shared, but we are seeing that.”
Facebook has become a place where people express a range of emotions, “for better or worse, and often for the worse” Sreenivasan said.
The emotion displayed by Paquette was indeed raw and is now permanent. “This now has a life of its own and a kind of permanency that he may not understand,” Sreenivasan said. “Maybe that’s what he wants, but he may not know that’s going on. But who are we to judge someone who’s gone through something awful like that right at this moment.”
“This sort of thing, suffering, trauma, this cuts across … boundaries …” SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT CHRISTOPHER SCHNEIDER
Social media expert Christopher Schneider, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, wasn’t surprised at the collective outpouring of support for the Paquettes. “What this does is take the individual troubles and makes them public troubles, in that other people can relate to this,” he said. “Look at something like human suffering. People suffer, human beings have different kinds of suffering and they can sympathize and relate to different people … This is the human condition, and people connect to other people through this. And it in part explains this process.”
Scheider said social media has given people the ability to connect with others over vast geographical distances. “This sort of thing, suffering, trauma, this cuts across racial boundaries, class boundaries, sex and gender boundaries ... everybody can sort of connect with this kind of thing,” Schneider said.