Beyond physical boundaries? Platformed grief, algorithmic governance, and the co-construction of mourning in the social media era

This study examines the digital transformation of collective mourning through a 48-month mixed-methods investigation combining digital ethnography, in-depth interviews (n = 25), computational sentiment analysis, and comparative case study methodology. Drawing on continuing bonds theory, mediatisation theory, and critical platform studies, it explores how digital platforms reconfigure—rather than displace—established mourning rituals. The empirical focus encompasses the online memorial centred on Dr Li Wenliang, the Wuhan physician whose suppressed COVID-19 warnings and death catalysed one of the most significant spontaneous mourning events in Chinese social media history, alongside longitudinal data from the Memorial Hall platform. Countering narratives of digital rupture, the findings advance a co-constructive account in which online and offline mourning practices are mutually constitutive within shared socio-technical and political fields. Three mechanisms—narrative aggregation, temporal layering, and recursive algorithmic circulation—are identified as central to the construction of digital collective memory. What distinguishes platformed grief analytically is not the transcendence of traditional constraints but its production through algorithmic governance under commercial and, in the Chinese context, state-mediated conditions. Critical tensions surrounding platform commodification, posthumous data rights, and censorship are examined, with implications for platform design and regulatory policy.