Parasocial Grief and Humor: Coping with Death Through the Internet’s Native Language

Parasocial grief is a phenomenon in which an individual grieves the death of a public figure they do not know personally. Anticipatory parasocial grief references the expectation of losing this one-sided relationship. As these experiences are shared on social media, there is an opportunity to observe how grief is communicated using the “native language” of the Internet, humor. This study explores how people use humor to discuss grief through content analysis of 90 videos posted to the social media platform TikTok that display parasocial or anticipatory parasocial grief. This includes parasocial grief content posted about musician Jimmy Buffett and actress Betty White, and anticipatory parasocial grief content posted about the ongoing lives and legacies of musicians Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. I concluded that all video creators used humor as a communication tool for their grief emotions. They displayed traditional parasocial grief and anticipatory parasocial grief coping mechanisms like shock, love, sadness, memorializing, reminiscing, anger, and religious coping. However, they shared these ideas through the comedic techniques of parody, absurdity, coincidence, deceitful behavior, being “caught out,” puns and wordplay, memes, and conceptual surprise. I conclude that expressions of emotions associated with grief were shaped by the culture of the Internet and social media. I argue these video creators’ displays of communication demonstrate how humor is a normative practice for online discussions. Further, this reflects how the culture of online spaces influences the way people choose to communicate within them, similar to offline spaces. Last, I argue social media and its cultural influence on the sharing of ideas and emotions within its digital bounds make it a rich venue for exploring social life. In this sense, researchers would be remiss not to consider social media data a valuable resource. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to the sociology of emotions through support for the constructionist perspective of emotions, and a methodological contribution to the study of social media content.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Watson, Kaitlyn Brianne 1999-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Katz, Sheila M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Lee, Taeyoung
• Lee, Shayne

• Sociology

Language dc:language.iso

English

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/19913

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/19913