Gendered moral economies of sympathy after suicide in Arabic-language Facebook comments

Introduction This study examines sympathy as a socially organized emotion in Arabic-language digital discourse about suicide. Drawing on the sociology of emotions, suicide stigma, and digital death studies, it investigates how public Facebook comment cultures distribute compassion, blame, and moral worth after suicide. Methods A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 2,132 publicly visible comments responding to three highly discussed suicide cases. Comments were coded for inferred public gender presentation, emotional orientation, reported case context, and dominant interpretive frame. Pearson chi-square tests were calculated from raw counts; Cramer’s V , 95% Wilson confidence intervals, and sensitivity analyses are reported. Results Comments from accounts inferred as female were more often sympathetic than comments from accounts inferred as male (60.0% vs. 40.5%; V = 0.15), and commenter composition differed across the three cases ( V = 0.29). Religious framing was the most common interpretive repertoire (48.6%) and could accompany both mercy and condemnation. Discussion The study develops the concept of a moral economy of sympathy to describe the social rules through which digital publics allocate compassion after suicide. Because each case combines a particular person, national setting, reported circumstance, and media framing, the findings are case-specific and should not be generalized to Arab publics.