Digital mourning: Revisiting COVID-era #funeral discourse on Twitter

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted funeral practices across the world, as public health restrictions limited gatherings and altered how funerals and mourning practices could take place. This study serves as a retrospective account of funeral-related discourse on Twitter, now X, during the first year of the pandemic. We conducted a mixed-methods content analysis of a random sample of 900 English-language posts containing the hashtag #funeral, drawn from a larger corpus of COVID-19-related tweets posted between February 2020 and January 2021. The analysis examined public expressions of grief, ritual disruption, adaptation, the role of funeral service professionals and related concerns during a period of widespread crisis. At the interpretive level, four overlapping discourses were identified across the thematic findings: disrupted rituals and mourning at a distance; visibility, unequal recognition and politicized mourning; funeral economies and unequal mourning; and professional care and ritual continuity under restriction. Rather than signaling a complete transformation of mourning, the findings show how established practices were publicly reconfigured through Twitter, altering how funeral-related experiences were made visible, circulated and contested during the pandemic.