The Public Face of Grief: Parental Bereavement and Social Media

The expression of grief in social media is a complex and multi-layered issue that is ever present in our lives, especially with the increase in social media engagement. In this study, we interviewed 10 bereaved parents around their experiences of social media as vehicle to express their grief following the death of a child. We also interviewed 10 people who posted on sites offering bereavement support and examined multiple social media sites dedicated to grief and loss of a child. Guided by Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics, we developed several interpretations of this complex and complicated relationship of grief and social media. In this paper, we discuss some of our findings around interpretations of relevant emotion, honoring the deceased, and seeking orientation in a changed world. Advice from bereaved parents is offered to others with similar losses and to those posting on bereavement sites. In the end, we are faced with the interpretation that this relationship of social media and grief is many things, but it is never “neutral.”  Keywords: Grief, social media, hermeneutics, Gadame

War on Weight: Capturing the Complexities of Weight with Hermeneutics

Purpose: In professional practice, body weight issues are typically considered from an individual-level standpoint. In contrast to this dominant perspective, we highlight that body weight has prominent social, economic, and political influences and connotations. An examination of the social complexity of weight provides opportunity to shift focus from individual to societal and structural influences on perceptions of weight.  Methods: Seven renowned experts in weight-related issues with at least 10-years-experience in various fields from across Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada participated in interviews about their professional experience with weight. Interviews were analyzed using hermeneutic methods via an iterative interpretive process.  Results: The interviews revealed a battlefield, a war waged on weight. War emerged as an overall metaphor that included aspects of: war on obesity, bodies as battlefields, war camps, war fronts, entrenchment and negotiation and, finally, the phenomenon of “no man’s land.” Conclusions: In many ways, language itself limits us from capturing the complexities of weight. The war metaphor provides a way of understanding the intensity of the firestorm surrounding the construct of weight. New understandings from what we might refer to as veterans of the war on weight offer hope for transformation, not just win or lose, but a hermeneutic wager of possibility.             Keywords: weight, body image, weight bias, hermeneutics, qualitative researc