‘All We’ve Got is Each Other’: After Life: Personal trauma, grief, resilience and the community journalist

Scholarship on how the audience perceives journalism in the real world through the image of the journalist in popular culture is growing, but little addresses how these professional portrayals can also showcase the personal identity of journalists. The Netflix dark comedy After Life (2019–22) follows community-based journalist Tony Johnson through his grieving process from the death of his wife, and his personal trauma appears to have had a direct effect on his professional role, as both identities are immersed in the local community where emotional post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggers are unavoidably present. However, individual behavioural patterns and protective factors such as social support contribute to resilience. Using the lens of popular culture and through a textual analysis of all After Life episodes, this article explores how personal trauma impacts a community journalist’s professional role and the community’s impact on the journalist’s resilience.