The Lifeworld of Grief in the Platform Era: A Phenomenological Study of Grief Influencers’ Experiences, Algorithmic Power, and the Micropolitics of Affect

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: The proliferation of social media platforms has transformed grief from a predominantly private experience into a public, networked, and technologically mediated phenomenon in which narratives of loss are increasingly shaped by algorithms, the attention economy, and affective norms. This study aimed to understand the lifeworld of grief in the platform era and explore grief influencers’ lived experiences at the intersection of loss, algorithmic power, and the micropolitics of affect.

Methodology: This qualitative study employed an interpretive phenomenological approach. Participants were 10 Instagram influencers actively engaged in narrating experiences of grief, purposively selected based on their direct experience of producing loss-related content and maintaining ongoing interactions with audiences. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed using interpretive phenomenological and thematic analysis. The credibility of the analysis was enhanced through participant checking, peer review, documentation of the analytical process, and researcher reflexivity.

Findings: The analysis revealed eight interconnected themes structuring the lifeworld of platformed grief: reconstructing relationships with the deceased through digital memory, publicization of loss, emotional labor and management of emotional displays, algorithmic power and the politics of visibility, micropolitics of affect and implicit norms of digital mourning, the duality of social support and algorithmic control, identity reconstruction following loss, and continuous negotiation with platform logics. The findings further indicated that platforms simultaneously facilitate empathy, social support, continuing emotional bonds, and meaning reconstruction while imposing invisible forms of control over the expression, visibility, legitimacy, and circulation of grief narratives through algorithms, engagement metrics, and audience expectations.

Conclusion: Platformed grief constitutes a multidimensional experience emerging at the intersection of affect, technology, and power. Within this environment, grieving individuals function simultaneously as narrators of loss, managers of affect, constructors of digital memory, and negotiators of algorithmic logics. Understanding grief in the digital era therefore requires attention to both the supportive affordances of platforms and the mechanisms of power, visibility, and affective regulation embedded within their architectures.