Algorithmic Grief Invisibility & Fragmented Narratives: A Theory-Building Framework for Algorithmically Mediated Grief

Grief increasingly unfolds within digitally mediated environments in which automated systems shape visibility, continuity, and social acknowledgment. This article advances a theoretical contribution to thanatology by introducing algorithmic grief invisibility (AGI), a framework for understanding how algorithmically mediated environments can function as contemporary sites of disenfranchised grief without attributing agency or intent to technology. Drawing on Doka’s disenfranchised grief, Neimeyer’s meaning reconstruction, and continuing bonds scholarship, it theorizes that disruptions in visibility, moderation, sequencing, and social feedback may fragment three narrative threads central to bereavement adaptation: the event story of the loss, the relational back story through which continuing bonds are sustained, and identity reconstruction. As a pre-empirical contribution, AGI is offered to support scholarly dialogue, clinical reflection, and future research questions, rather than to test hypotheses or document prevalence. Clinical and educational implications are discussed as reflective extensions of established grief theory.