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Article published In:
Networked Practices of Emotion and Stancetaking in Reactions to Mediatized Events and Crises
Edited by Korina Giaxoglou and Marjut Johansson
[Pragmatics 30:2] 2020
► pp. 247–276

“I can’t believe #Ziggy #Stardust died”

Stance, fan identities and multimodality in reactions to the death of David Bowie on Instagram

ORCID logo | University of Zurich

Social networking sites (SNSs) have changed the way we mourn. Reactions on SNSs to celebrity death in particular have begun to attract the attention of both academic researchers and the broader media, yet so far linguistic studies thereof remain relatively rare. This study addresses this research gap by examining the pragmatics of Instagram posts labelled #bowie following the death of the musician David Bowie on 10 January 2016. It shows how Instagram users engage in affective stance-taking strategies ranging from disbelief to acceptance. It also suggests that the multimodality of Instagram posts functions as a means of combining grief and identity work within a fan community. The findings are relevant for an understanding of mediatised affect and offer further evidence of a renegotiation of norms of mourning online.

Keywords: celebrity, celebrity death, David Bowie, fandom, hashtags, Instagram, mourning, social media
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Beyond the parasocial relationship? Fandom and celebrity in digital media
  • 3.Stance-taking in social media
  • 4.Grief and mourning online
  • 5.Outline of the study and methodology
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Affective stance-taking in mourning David Bowie
    • 6.2Fan identities
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Declaration of conflict of interest
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 6 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18061.mat
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