A Dialogue in a Dislocated Space and Time: How Celebrity Digital Mourning Reshapes Chinese Fans’ Memories of Death

Abstract

How to recognize death and how to build up memories related to it is both solemn and sacred and full of mystery to the Chinese people, who have a deep traditional culture. This study focuses on the “digital mourning” of American basketball superstar Kobe Bryant by Chinese fans on social media platforms. Employing an exploratory research approach that combines virtual ethnography with semi-structured interviews, it analyzes how digital mourning for celebrities influences Chinese fans’ memories of death and mourning rituals. The study found that following Kobe’s death, social media accounts served as platforms for fans to engage with the deceased, bringing the emotional release central to the mourning process into the public sphere through “digital mourning” and shifting mourning rituals from the “private” realm of the individual to the “public” realm of the collective. Social media accounts used by Kobe during his lifetime, functioning as virtual extensions of physical mausoleums, have transformed into “digital tombs” where the living collectively commemorate the departed. Within the virtual, digital space constructed around this “digital tombs”, fan communities not only spontaneously create “imagined interactions” with the deceased by transcending the barriers of time and space, but also seek emotional release and psychological solace. “Digital mourning” for celebrities places grief within a public sphere open to discussion, reshaping Chinese fans’ perceptions of death in the social media era while also serving as a crucial entry point for analyzing the impact of digital mourning on the Chinese public’s traditional memories of death.