Valuing Trans Lives After Suicide: Rituals of Commemoration in Digital Social Media Culture

IF 5.5 1区 文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-08-27 DOI:10.1177/20563051241274680
Joe Edward Hatfield
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Abstract

In 2014, a trans teenager named Leelah Alcorn posted a suicide letter to her public Tumblr account. Almost a decade later, in 2023, Eden Knight, another young trans woman, posted a suicide letter to her public Twitter account. Both suicide letters went viral and inspired memorial hashtags on the platforms where they initially circulated. In this article, I identify similarities between the cases, conceptualizing both as rituals of commemoration aimed toward restoring value to trans lives lost too soon. My analysis shows how ordinary users leverage the connective affordances embedded within popular social media platforms to sustain structured, value-laden acts of remembrance and mourning. In doing so, I elucidate four stages of the ritual process: (1) sharing suicide letters, (2) enshrining selfies, (3) modulating memories, and (4) casting blame. Ultimately, I argue that trans-led rituals of commemoration can function as justice-oriented tactics of resistance against engrained systems of oppression that perpetuate disproportionally high rates of early death within trans communities.
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珍视自杀后的变性人生命:数字社交媒体文化中的纪念仪式
2014 年,一位名叫莉拉-阿尔科恩(Leelah Alcorn)的变性少女在她的 Tumblr 公共账户上发布了一封自杀信。近十年后的 2023 年,另一位年轻的变性女性伊登-奈特(Eden Knight)也在自己的推特公共账户上发布了一封遗书。这两封自杀信在最初流传的平台上都引起了病毒式传播,并激发了纪念标签。在这篇文章中,我指出了这两个案例之间的相似之处,将两者概念化为纪念仪式,旨在恢复过早逝去的变性生命的价值。我的分析展示了普通用户如何利用流行社交媒体平台中的连接能力来维持有组织、有价值的纪念和哀悼活动。在此过程中,我阐释了仪式过程的四个阶段:(1)分享遗书,(2)纪念自拍照,(3)调节记忆,以及(4)指责。最终,我认为由变性人主导的纪念仪式可以作为以正义为导向的策略,抵制根深蒂固的压迫制度,因为这些制度使变性人群体中过高的早亡率长期存在。
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来源期刊
Social Media + Society
Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-
CiteScore
9.20
自引率
3.80%
发文量
111
审稿时长
12 weeks
期刊介绍: Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.
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