Digital Cemetery: Public Mourning,Emotional Expression And Justice Construction

While justice has long been a central issue in public discourse and its construction,as it relates to human civilization and social development,the age of digital social media offers more possibilities due to wider public participation,and has become more complex due to the richness of public emotional expression.The growing phenomenon of "digital mourning" is particularly notable,as the public’s spontaneous online mourning has long gone beyond the expression of remembrance for a specific deceased individual,and has become particularly concerned with the fundamental questioning of the cause of death of an individual,and thus consciously committed to the ultimate pursuit of social justice.In other words,public ’digital mourning’ has increasingly become a kind of emotional political practice with public justice demands,and therefore deserves to be examined and explored in depth by researchers.In view of this,this paper uses the public mourning practice in Liu Xuezhou’s microblog as a typical case,and employs the qualitative empirical research method of case and textual analysis in an attempt to reveal the complex and close relationship between public emotional mourning and justice in the digital media era,and thus also to expand the exploration of death-related issues in media studies to a certain extent.In general,this paper attempts to build an interpretive framework of justice mourning in the digital age from the practical perspective of "emotion",firstly by clarifying the anchoring of the public’s digital identity in the social media space to reveal the multiple dimensions of mourning and its mourning narrative paths,then by exploring the types of public expressions of emotional mourning in the social media space and the corresponding mechanisms,and finally by explaining the public’s emotional mourning in the social media space.The paper then explores the types of public expressions of emotional mourning in social media spaces and the corresponding mechanisms,and finally explains the underlying goals of justice to which public mourning is committed and its specific constructs.The paper argues that the development of social media technology not only provides a channel for public mourning practices,but also serves as a medium for public emotional expression,transforming what was once a private issue into a visible public issue.More importantly,in the process of digital mourning,the public establishes a specific identity imaginary and ultimately contributes to the active construction of social justice through the rich practice of emotional expression.Specifically in Liu Xuezhou’s digital mourning practice,the public constructs itself into three mourning identities: the deceased overseer,the violent resister and the digital graveyard keeper,and through the mechanisms of compassion,empathy and sympathy,it transcends the previous practice of individual private emotional expression and ultimately points to a multi-dimensional connotation of social justice involving moral justice,distributive justice and interactive justice.In short,the public’s emotional expression of mourning in the digital media era has shaped a digital mourning culture that transcends the private,and the digital media itself constitutes an important public space for the public to turn their emotional expression towards justice.