Mourning on Mobile Media

Everyday Affective Witnessing

Author  Larissa Hjorth
Mourning on Mobile Media

How our mourning rituals on mobile media reflect our social, cultural and emotional lives.

From Instagram eulogies of human and animal kin to witnessing mass human destruction on TikTok, mobile media practices play a significant role in contemporary grieving, memorializing, and mourning rituals in an age of permanent crisis. Our devices bear witness to the intimate, affective, embodied, and collective ways we mourn in, and through, contemporary media. In Mourning on Mobile Media, Larissa Hjorth aims to understand the role of mobile media mourning rituals as a reflection of our lives.

As disasters, pandemics, and war become more commonplace in and through mobile devices as affective witnesses, how can we learn from mourning practices as a reflection of contemporary media culture? The…