"I hate you. I love you. I'm sorry. I miss you." Understanding Online Grief Expression Through Suicide Bereavement Letter-Writing Practices

Abstract

When bereaved individuals seek online support in response to the suicide of a loved one, their expressions of grief take many forms. Although the intense grief expressions individuals bereaved by suicide commonly share in private therapeutic settings can be helpful in healing from traumatic loss, these same expressions may potentially cause harm to others when shared in a public online support community. In this study, we present a qualitative analysis of letters posted on the r/SuicideBereavement subreddit, and comments replying to those posts, to explore what diverse expressions of grief additionally demand of platform design. We find that letter posts contain potentially harmful grief expressions that, in this community, generate mutual support among community members. Informed by our findings, this study considers the design challenges for online platforms as they simultaneously support users receiving support and healing through sharing certain grief expressions, while also supporting users who will be harmed by exposure to those grief expressions. Taking inspiration from offline therapy modalities, we consider the design implications of creating specialized online grief support spaces for diverse grief expressions.