Exploring emotional expressions on YouTube through the lens of media system dependency theory

Abstract

This study extends current work by investigating the role social networking sites play in facilitating emotional expressions following the death of a public figure, Michael Jackson. Through the lens of Media System Dependency theory, I perform a qualitative content analysis on comments generated by users of YouTube. Results show that YouTube plays an important role in facilitating emotional expressions as the analysis uncovered a variety of emotions (i.e. sadness and grief, anger and frustration). I also identify other possible micro-level and macro-level effects which may have influenced these emotional responses. This study also found that emotional expressions differed between gender with respect to the passage of time, ongoing events in the environment, and negative reports about Jackson. The results indicate that users can depend on the content provided by YouTube to meet their emotional needs during the grieving process following the death of a public figure.

Keywords

emotional expressions gender grieving Media System Dependency theory social networking sites YouTube gender

Introduction

Research has established that public grieving can be equally stressful and emotional for the affected individuals as the death of a family member, close friend or relative (Jaworski, 2008). Indeed, while grieving can be private and confined within members of the bereaved family, public grieving also occurs in the death of celebrities, government officials, and even among strangers that somehow share a common bond with the community (Brennan, 2008). In the case of Princess Diana for instance, reports indicated that the death and funeral of Princess Diana caused people to experience grief and psychological distress (Brown et al., 2003).

In recent years, the prevalence of the Web has paved the way for new online avenues where people can express their grief. The Web memorial is a quintessential example, where people may post tributes and other messages to departed loved ones. Other forms include discussion groups, and of late, blogs and social networking services. Regardless of modality, online platforms provide a means for individuals to express their emotions, share experiences and information, to obtain help from others, and even for the bereaved to help others as well (Dadich, 2009).

To date, online grieving is primarily text-based. However, the advent of social networking and video-sharing sites has opened up new possibilities with respect to bereavement. While there are a variety of these platforms, they share common characteristics in that they allow users to create and share content as well as access content contributed by other users (e.g. share videos with others, rate videos, and/or post comments). YouTube, perhaps the most popular video-sharing service in current use, is one example. It offers basic features such as the uploading and viewing of video clips. Viewers may post comments to a video and rate it by either ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ it. Advanced features that support social networking include the ability to create user profiles (channels) and inviting friends to join such channels. Due to its extensive range of features, it may also be labeled as a social networking site (Pauwels and Hellriegel, 2009). YouTube’s increase in popularity is unabated since its inception in 2005, and in May 2010, about 14.6 billion videos were viewed (comScore, 2010), accounting for 43 percent of all videos accessed online. Taken together, YouTube possesses characteristics unique from other social networking applications and therefore has the potential to impact the grieving process as they allow users to view videos and to share their thoughts, emotions and experiences with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Research suggests that how one expresses one’s emotions may influence the individual’s trajectories of adjustment to the loss (Westphal et al., 2010). Emotional expressions may also serve to initiate and maintain social interactions, and shape communication patterns between the individuals and others in bereavement (Hayes and Metts, 2008). The expressions of grief are affected by several factors. First, males and females have been found to express their grief differently. In his analysis of condolence books for Princess Diana, Brennan (2008) uncovered more messages signed by women than men, suggesting gender differences in expressions of grief. Such differences have also been noted on the Web. Likewise, de Vries and Rutherford (2004) found that women authored more Web memorials than did men.

Second, the way individuals experience and express grief exhibit changes over time (Bonanno and Kaltman, 2001). Traylor et al. (2003) further showed that families who are more able to express their grief reported less grief over time than those who were not able to do so. With the passage of time, Field and Friedrichs (2004) found that bereaved individuals are better able to experience more sustained emotions of joy when thinking about the deceased, than those that are recently bereaved. Hence, past studies have suggested that gender and duration of grief are two important factors that may influence how one reacts and copes during the grieving process.

Despite a wealth of literature on grieving and emotional expressions, the majority of work done to date has dealt with the death of private individuals. Studies concerning public figures are more uncommon. Further, research into the use of social networking platforms that harness video for expressions of grief is even rarer, to the best of my knowledge. Therefore, the present research is timely as I seek to understand the role YouTube plays in the grieving process following the death of a public figure. Through the lens of Media System Dependency (MSD) theory (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976), I perform a qualitative content analysis on comments generated by YouTube users, focusing on those who watched Michael Jackson videos following news of his death. Here, these users are known as content consumers, having watched the video content on YouTube. In brief, This study aims to explore the following general research question: What role does social networking platform play in facilitating expression of emotions following the death of a public figure? The use of MSD is pertinent in this work as the theory will be employed to help understand users’ dependencies on social networking platforms for information to reduce ambiguities surrounding Jackson’s unexpected passing. Jackson was selected for this study as he was arguably one of the most famous people known all over the world and thus satisfies the criteria as a public figure that many people can identify with

Literature review

Media System Dependency theory

Media System Dependency (MSD) theory was originally used to investigate people’s dependency on mass media to satisfy clusters of needs arising from social roles to individual dispositions (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976). Subsequently, Ball-Rokeach et al. (1984) elaborated that the extent of an individual’s dependence on media to attain a goal is contingent upon the information resources provided by the media. The audience–media–society tripartite relationship is the key relationship within MSD (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976). Here, society is viewed as an organic structure in which individuals, groups, organizations and other social systems are inter-related (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1989) and an audience is affected not only by media content but also by the society or environment in which they consume the content (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976).

The concept of ambiguity is particularly important in MSD which predicts that unstable and ambiguous situations in society result in people becoming increasingly dependent on the media for information to resolve those ambiguities (Ball-Rokeach et al., 1984). This postulation has been confirmed by several studies (e.g. Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998; Hirschburg et al., 1986). Moreover, MSD also maintains that audiences’ media dependency relations will intensify at times of major crises where people prefer to seek information about the situation from media rather than relying on interpersonal communication (Hirschburg et al., 1986). Indeed, several studies have used MSD to examine media effects in communities in which a specific phenomenon occurs (e.g. McDonald, 1983). MSD has also recently been used to analyze various unanticipated events such as 9/11 (Kim et al., 2004) and the SARS epidemic in China (Tai and Sun, 2007). Since the death of Michael Jackson resulted in an online social phenomenon where millions of users flocked to various online services to look for information and share experiences, I deem that MSD is applicable in helping us to understand users’ dependency on social networking sites for information to reduce ambiguities surrounding his unexpected death.

The original notion of MSD is that media are powerful as they control the information resources individuals require to achieve their goals (Ball-Rokeach, 1998). That is, individuals have certain informational goals that they are motivated to achieve, and media provide the information to help achieve those goals. This relationship can be thought of as the individual–media dependency relation. Put differently, the original conceptualization of MSD assumes that individuals are dependent on media to provide information about their social environment; however, media and social systems do not require informational input from individuals (Ball-Rokeach, 1998).

However, the development of social networking sites introduces new sources of dependency for information and may alter the original conceptualization of MSD. Put simply, by providing individuals with the ability to create information, social networking sites have changed the dependency relationship. Such sites allow users who have consumed content (i.e. content consumers), the freedom to interact with others as well as to create and disseminate information, thus becoming producers of content at the same time (Pauwels and Hellriegel, 2009). Here, I argue that social networking sites empower individuals with the ability to generate information and hence alter the original conceptualization of MSD as well as the individual–media dependency relation. In other words, individuals not only have access to content from multiple sources (i.e. other users) but can also respond via such sites after content consumption. Thus, the current study extends prior research on MSD by focusing on content consumers on a social networking site and studying the responses of users after content consumption.

Emotions

According to MSD, media consumption can change the emotional responses individuals have on their environment (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976). The study of emotional responses to media content is not new and has previously been demonstrated in the literature (e.g. Lang et al., 2004; Ogan et al., 2005). For instance, emoticons, which are symbols resembling facial expressions represented by punctuation and letters, are often employed to express emotions. Indeed, the ability of online environments to facilitate emotional expression has been widely noted (Coursaris and Liu, 2009).

In a separate but relevant stream of work, scholars have indicated the importance of emotional responses and reported that such expressions during periods of distress and bereavement help individuals to cope with the loss (Pernice-Duca, 2008). Specifically, research has indicated that the bereaved experienced a wide spectrum of emotions (Dutton and Zisook, 2005). These emotions (e.g. grief, compassion, hostility) were also found to be experienced by people following the death of Princess Diana (Brown et al., 2003). Hence, a platform which affords emotional expressions connects the immediately bereaved with the wider community-in-mourning (Brennan, 2008), and will promote greater understanding of one’s own feelings through their expressions in writing (Jones, 1999). Since content consumers on YouTube can also be producers of content on the site, YouTube may then provide a platform for these users to express and share their thoughts. In particular, the content consumers in this study are likely to be emotionally affected by the videos being watched as the content is related to the death of a celebrity. Taken together, consuming content on social networking sites following the death of a public figure is likely to trigger different types of emotional responses (e.g. sadness, anger). Further, as prescribed by MSD, these emotional responses will be useful in understanding the effects of media use.

Effects

One unique aspect of MSD is that this theory incorporates both micro- and macro-level effects by considering macro-level influences on micro-level media consumption. This means that although individuals freely choose the media they consume, they do so in light of conditions in their macro-level social environment (Tai and Sun, 2007). At the micro-level, MSD theory suggests that individuals’ dependency relations stem from a desire to achieve personal goals, while at the macro-level their dependency relations are governed more by changes in media and social systems (Ball-Rokeach, 1985).

In order to examine both effects on social networking sites, this study needs to identify factors that may influence the dependency relations following the death of a public figure. At the micro-level, I examine gender differences by studying how males and females depend on social networking sites for emotional expression following such a death. The reason for studying the gender effect is that multiple studies have indicated that males and females experience and express their grief differently (de Vries and Rutherford, 2004). For instance, Tarakeshwar et al. (2005) suggested that females are more likely to invoke religion or faith as a bereavement coping mechanism than males. Recent studies have also suggested that males and females communicate and respond differently to media (e.g. Ledbetter, 2009). Taken together, it is likely that the dependency relations on social networking sites for emotional expression will be different for males and females as they may have different emotional responses to the content consumed on these sites.

Besides gender, another important factor that affects the dependency relation is time or duration of grief (Lehman et al., 1987). This study examines time as part of the social environmental factor that may influence the emotional expressions of people and hence time operates at the macro-level in this study. Previous studies have provided evidence that grief-related behaviors and emotions change over time (Bonanno and Kaltman, 2001). In particular, studies on the long-term use of memorials reveal that the experience and emotions of the individual and the community in relation to the memorial change over time, which results in the alteration of memory related to the meaning of the memorial space (Smith, 1997). Scharlach and Fredrikson (1993) further found that people experienced a number of emotional and somatic reactions years after the death of their parent. Collectively, these studies provide convincing evidence that time may change how people depend on media following the death of a public figure as grief symptoms may or may not persist over a period of time following a loss.

The death of Michael Jackson and YouTube

Michael Jackson unexpectedly died on 25 June 2009. At the news of his death, millions of users flocked to YouTube to view Jackson-related videos, post comments and upload thousands of fan clips and tributes (Gillum, 2009). Thus, YouTube would be an appropriate platform to study media dependency related to the death of Jackson as we can be sure that a large number of comments representing diverse expressions can be analyzed. Moreover, from the perspective of MSD, the site is likely to transform old producer–consumer dependency relations since users are not only active consumers of information but they have the potential to become information producers by contributing ratings, comments or even new videos.

In short, the aim in this study is to use MSD to understand how people depend on YouTube following the death of Michael Jackson. The objectives are three-fold. The first examines the responses posted on YouTube by content consumers. I seek to understand how content consumers depend on YouTube by studying the emotions experienced and expressed by users who consume Jackson-related content. The second objective investigates the effects that time and gender have on the emotions expressed. A unique aspect of MSD is the incorporation of both micro- and macro-level effects in understanding media dependency relations. Hence, the third objective is to identify both these effects that influence emotional responses on YouTube. In sum, the work aims to examine the following research questions. Following the death of a public figure:

(1) What types of emotional responses are expressed on YouTube; (2a) What are the effects of time on the emotional responses expressed on YouTube? (2b) What are the effects of gender on the emotional responses expressed on YouTube? (3) What are other possible micro- and macro-level effects that may influence emotional responses expressed on YouTube?

Method

Data collection

This study examines the data collected during the period of Jackson’s death from 25 June 2009 to 16 July 2009. This period covered the major events from when news of Jackson’s unexpected demise initially broke to his public memorial service that was watched by millions around the world. Further, the duration of three weeks is justified in this context because MSD is better at explaining short-term rather than long-term social phenomena (Baran and Davis, 2000). To examine the effects of time, I separate the data into three time periods: Week 1 (25 June 2009 to 2 July 2009); Week 2 (3 July 2009 to 9 July 2009); and Week 3 (10 July 2009 to 16 July 2009).

A random sample of 20 popular YouTube videos related to Jackson’s death was selected for each week, making a total of 60 videos for the study duration. It should be noted that I ensured these videos were contributed during the selected time period. I searched for these videos using keywords such as ‘Michael Jackson’, ‘Michael Jackson Death’, ‘MJ’, and their associated tags. Three members of the research team watched all 60 videos to ensure that they were related to Jackson, and had more than 100 comments to ensure popularity. For each video, we first randomly selected 50 comments posted by users. Next, a customized application to extract gender information from their YouTube profile pages was developed. Comments from content consumers who did not specify their gender were excluded, as were those not in English. In total, we downloaded 3000 comments over the three week period. Table 1 shows a summary of the data collected. Around 49 percent of these sampled comments were posted by female contents consumers while the rest were posted by male contents consumers.

Table 1.

Data details.

	Number of videos sampled	Numbers of comments sampled per video	Total number of comments sampled	Total number of comments by male content consumers	Total number of comments by female content consumers
Week 1	20	50	1000	550	450
Week 2	20	50	1000	516	484
Week 3	20	50	1000	437	563
Total	60	150	3000	1503	1497

Qualitative content analysis

Qualitative content analysis is appropriate for the current study because it uses a naturalistic paradigm to interpret meaning from the content of text data (Cavanagh, 1997). Hsieh and Shannon (2005) defined qualitative content analysis as a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes. Two approaches elaborated by Hsieh and Shannon (2005) are employed in this study. The first is the directed content analysis approach where the researcher uses prior research to develop the initial coding scheme before analyzing the data. As analysis proceeds, existing codes may be combined or omitted and additional codes are developed. The second approach is conventional content analysis where categories are derived from data during analysis. This means recurring themes from the content need to be identified to gain a richer understanding of a phenomenon. Thus, combining these two approaches will allow data triangulation and strengthening of the research findings.

Directed content analysis

Here, the primary coding instrument focused on characterizing the types of emotional responses found in the downloaded comments. The coding scheme developed by Macias et al. (2005) was adopted as it has been applied successfully to understand emotions expressed on online discussion forums. This scheme originally identified 19 categories of emotions: Sympathy/Empathy, Happy/Joy, Scared/Fear, Frustration/Tired, Anxiety, Interested/Curious, Sadness, Pride, Excited/Anticipation, Relief, Anger, Disappointment, Surprise, Guilt, Acceptance, Disgust, Love, Jealousy, Denial and Others.

Three members of the research team were first given 300 comments to code comments into these 19 categories. Next, the three coders presented the findings to the research team, and discussed and resolved differences in opinions. During this process, some categories were merged (e.g. Sadness and Disappointment, Love and Pride, Anger, Frustration and Disgust) and others (e.g. Interested/Curious, Guilt, Excited/Anticipation) that were not relevant were dropped. The final coding scheme consists of 10 categories: Sympathy, Happy/Joy, Scared/Fear, Sadness/Disappointment, Denial, Love/Pride, Surprise/Shock, Anger/Frustration/Disgust, Curious and Others. Using this approach, an overall reliability of 93 percent was achieved. This is above the minimal 80 percent of the agreement level (Riffe et al., 1998).

Conventional content analysis

Directed content analysis enabled us to examine the emotional responses based on preconceived categories from prior research. However, to provide more insights on possible micro- and macro-level effects that may have influenced emotional expressions, conventional content analysis, also known as inductive category development (Mayring, 2000) was applied. This allowed new insights to emerge from the data.

To achieve this, I paid attention to the time the comments were posed, the gender of the content consumers, emotions expressed and whether the comments were responses to other comments or directly to the videos they watched. I found three recurring themes emerging from the data which provide insights on possible micro- and macro-effects influencing emotional expressions. These themes and the associated emotions are summarized in Table 2, and comprise reminiscences which reflect the influence of the individual’s past, on-going events which refer to the influence of actual events happening in the environment, and negative reports which consider the influence of negative information about Michael Jackson. The effects of reminiscences stem from the individuals (micro-level) while the source of ongoing events and negative reports were from the environment or society (macro-level).

Table 2.

Main dependency themes identified.

Main themes	Description
Micro-level:	Comments describing individuals’ memories/childhoods.
Reminiscences	Example:
	‘I remember me dancing on thriller and Billie Jean at home since I was a kid:-(’
Macro-level:	Comments relating to real life events (e.g. memorial service).
Ongoing events	Example:
	‘you’re the king, i miss you so so so so much … i love you michael jackson<3 there will be nobody like you … you’re forever in my heart and memory!’
Macro-level:	Comments responding to negative information posted by other users or news from other sources.
Negative reports	Example:
	‘I think that it is completely insensitive to make disgusting jokes, people can be so inhuman at times. MJ was naive and exploited all his life. R.I.P. Michael.’

Results

Emotional expressions

A summary of the emotional responses is shown in Figure 1. Using the directed content analysis approach, I found that the top four emotion categories were sadness/disappointment (27%), anger/frustration/disgust (21%), happy/joy (12%) and love/pride (11%). The category with the most comments was sadness/disappointment. Some were clearly very upset by the death of Jackson and were seemingly in tears when they posted their comments. Examples include ‘I’ve been holding back tears all day’, and ‘… today when I woke up … I heard what happened on radio … and after they played your song “heal the world” … I just cried :-((’. Interestingly, I observed that a variety of emoticons (e.g. :-((, =( or =‘( ) were used to convey sadness.

Figure 1.

Types of emotional expressions.

The next category is the anger/frustration/disgust emotion. The analysis suggests that this emotion stemmed from two sources of negative reports. One was based on information or news from the past, and the anger was directed at Jackson. Examples of unfavorable comments include, ‘Let’s all please remember MJ for what he really was an insane paedophile who did more harm to the kids of the world…. He is now where he deserves to be IN HELL!!’, and ‘I’ll hate Jacko as much as I want!’ The other source was based on more recent reports (including comments and videos) that were consumed on YouTube, and the anger was directed at other users who contributed the information. Some examples include, ‘all yall shutup with tha rude comments if u dont like him then keep the harsh comments to yourself ok …’ and ‘I think that it is completely insensitive to make disgusting jokes, people can be so inhuman at times.’ Emoticons were not typically used to convey anger/frustration. Instead, it was common to observe vulgar or offensive terms.

Finally, the positive emotions (i.e. happy/joy and love/pride categories) were related to the enjoyment that content consumers derived from watching the videos. For example, ‘very nice medley. this video put a smile on my face.:) lovely….’, ‘… at first I wasn’t going to click on [the video], I keep seeing all these lame clips … but I am glad I did … You guys did a really nice tribute to Mike … Love your voices …:).’ For the pride/love emotion, content consumers were pleased with what Jackson had accomplished in the past (e.g. ‘WOOOW great, nice song …love you mike.’). Emoticons were often used to convey these positive emotions (e.g. :), ^^, :-D).

Indeed, the results from the directed content analysis indicate that the death of Jackson brought out mixed emotions in people, and concur with MSD in that media content consumption triggers the expression of emotional responses that individuals feel towards their environment (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976). YouTube provides a platform to address this dependency relation as it allows content consumers avenues to express their emotions as can be seen by the following comments, ‘… we come here to show emotions … please let our people have emotions …’ and ‘This video is so sad, enough to make me tear up a bit every time I see it.’ The results further lend support to the underlying notion in MSD that both micro- and macro-level effects may influence the dependency relation. At the micro-level, I found that an individual’s past influences his/her emotional responses (reminiscing). At the macro-level, I observed that other occurrences in the environment (ongoing events), and negative comments from other users or news from other sources (negative reports) have potential influences on the emotions expressed by content consumers. The results associated with these three themes are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Effects of time on emotional expressions

Next, I examined the weekly breakdown for the different types of emotions uncovered (Figure 2). Here, the occurrences of some emotional expressions (e.g. sadness/ disappointment,) changed over time while others (e.g. denial) remained rather stable throughout the duration of the study. Specifically, the number of comments associated with sadness/disappointment decreased sharply from Week 1 to Week 3. In contrast, the number of comments associated with happy/joy increased gradually in the same period. However, the number of love/pride comments decreased slightly in Week 2 and then increased sharply in week 3. Interestingly, the reverse was observed for the anger/frustrations/disgruntled comments, peaking in Week 2 and decreasing in Week 3.

Figure 2.

Emotional expressions by time.

Conventional content analysis was able to provide some insights on the influence of both micro-level and macro-level effects on these changes. First, many comments associated with sadness/disappointment during Week 1 were related to reminiscing (micro-level effects). It appeared that many people experienced sadness not just because of Jackson’s death as an individual, but also because his death signified the end of an era of his music. I contend that this is because many of them grew up listening to Jackson’s songs, and memories of his music were a big part of their growing up years. Thus, their sadness and grief were related to their attachment to memories of their childhood, family and friends: for example, ‘I grew up with MJ and honestly he was one of the BIGGEST inspirations to me’, and ‘… but for me he was part of my life … because my dad used to always listen to him … so it’s like a remembrance of my childhood …’. Interestingly, I noticed that such comments associated with an individual’s past seemed to decrease by Week 2 and 3.

Additionally, many comments related to ongoing events and negative reports (macro-level effects) occurred during that same period. For instance, the increase in the number of angry comments in Week 2 was due partly to the negative media coverage about Jackson. In fact, this was the highest category in Week 2. Here, many angry comments were directed at a video that was posted during that time casting Jackson in bad light (e.g.‘These insults do need to stop out of respect for Michael …’). By Week 3, I found that many of the comments associated with anger decreased but those associated with positive emotions (i.e. love/pride and happy/joy) increased. I attributed this to another significant event which was the memorial of Jackson held on 7 July 2009, and videos of the event shortly after. Here, many comments were related to the memorial videos expressing their pride and love for Jackson’s daughter, and the performers. Examples include ‘I love this girl! … Beautiful, talented with a wonderful and warm smile’, and ‘I think it was very sweet and BRAVE of the daughter to go up there already about to cry and say what she did … I bet Michael was looking down from heaven at his daughter watching her give that sweet but oh so painful tribute toward her father …’.

Effects of gender on emotional expressions

Overall, there was an even distribution of comments posted by males and females (see Table 3). In terms of the emotions expressed by gender, there are some differences which deserved further elaboration. Males (367) posted more comments associated with anger/frustration than females (265), while females (450) posted more comments associated with sadness/disappointment than their male (351) counterparts. The most notable difference is the love/pride category, where females posted 233 comments as compared to only 108 by males.

Table 3.

Emotional expressions by gender.

	Male number (%)	Female number (%)	Total
Anger/Frustration/Disgust	367 (58)	265 (42)	632
Curious	70 (60)	47 (40)	117
Denial	22 (59)	15 (41)	37
Happy/Joy	163 (46)	192 (54)	355
Love/Pride	108 (32)	233 (68)	341
Other	293 ( 65)	157 (35)	450
Sadness/Disappointment	351 (48)	450 (52)	801
Scared	15 (50)	15 (50)	30
Surprise/Shock	55 (50)	56 (50)	111
Sympathy	59 (47)	67 (63)	126
Total comments	1503 (50)	1497 (50)	3000

Indeed the data suggest that females and males expressed their emotions differently following the death of a public figure, and that gender plays a role in how people depend on media for emotional expression. The analysis further revealed that most of the angry and sad emotions were due to negative comments from other users or negative news from other sources (macro-level effects). Interestingly, I found that males expressed anger when they were trying to defend Michael Jackson while females expressed sadness. For instance, a male posted this comment, ‘youtubers stop using michael jacksons death to get views! please!!! he has been used all his life by his father and the media would not stop saying bad things about him … and now people are milking his death for their own selfish reason[s] …’. Another male angrily commented, ‘What angers me is that … ppl [people] still have the audacity to make fun of you about your death and be cold hearted …’.

On the other hand, females were found to express sadness when defending Jackson’s legacy. For instance, a female user commented, ‘… just because some are born with innate gifts makes them wonderful …, the world could never accept that of Mike, because he was different and wanted the opposite to what the world wants, he was one person against a planet, God Bless him …’. Yet another lamented, ‘I can’t believe people now-a days are so disrespectful and judgemental … If night should ever turn to day … many of us making all these judgments would be ashamed of ourselves … the point here is that this was a human … whatever wrongs he did … it’s now between him and his maker …’.

I further observed that females and males seemed to express different emotional responses over time, leading us to further examine the existence of a possible interaction effect between gender (micro-level) and time (macro-level). As an example, I examine the largest category of comments (i.e. sadness/disappointment), and found that the number of such comments posted by males declined sharply from Week 1 (206) to Week 3 (28) while the decline was more gradual for females (from 194 in Week 1 to 102 in Week 3) (see Figure 3). In addition, this interaction was uncovered on the whole in that the number of messages contributed by females increased over the three weeks of the study, while those posted by males declined in the same period (see Figure 4). The results thus confirm the complex intertwining effects at the micro- and macro-levels in affecting users’ dependencies on media for emotional expressions.

Figure 3.

Interaction effects of gender and time for sadness/disappointment emotion, (N = 801).

Figure 4.

Total number of comments by time and gender, (N = 3000).

Discussion

With MSD as the theoretical framework, this study set out to examine media dependencies among content consumers on YouTube following the death of Michael Jackson. I explored how content consumers depend on YouTube to facilitate emotional expressions, and examined the effects of time and gender on such expressions. I also identified other possible micro-level and macro-level effects which may have influenced these emotional responses.

The study demonstrates that YouTube plays an important role in facilitating emotional expressions. The emotions that were found to be most commonly expressed were: (1) sadness and grief over Jackson’s death; (2) anger and frustration over negative media coverage of Jackson, or at Jackson himself; and (3) positive emotions such as happiness/joy and love/pride in paying tribute to Jackson, focusing especially on his music and its impact. Such emotional expressions possibly helped YouTube content consumers come to terms with Jackson’s death, understand their emotions, and cope with how they felt. The results thus concur with MSD by showing that individuals’ dependencies on media for emotional expression stem from the content provided by the media system, the nature of societal systems, and the behavior of the audience.

Media system

The content provided by YouTube plays an important role in evoking emotions from individuals via the videos as well as their associated summaries, titles and tags. Furthermore, content consumers who watch the videos are able to freely express their emotions through textual comments, emoticons, graphics and ratings. In the analysis, although the majority of the comments were personal expressions of emotions, thoughts and actions, and did not suggest the need for responses, I was surprised to find a number of comments were responses to other users’ comments, such as comforting grievers who were clearly upset or showing appreciation to others for contributing content. The results suggest that these affordances of YouTube enable the site to function like an online social support system facilitating not only personal emotional expressions but also emotional exchanges following the death of a public figure. This is in line with findings from earlier studies which demonstrate that people can depend on online communities for social and emotional support (Coulson, 2005). Hence, from the perspective of the media system, the results indicate that affordances or features of YouTube and other social networking sites alter the media dependency relationships by empowering users with the means to produce content and as a result change the way users rely on the media system for emotional expressions.

Societal systems

MSD theory articulates that structural dependency relations at the macro level determine the variation and nature of individual dependency relations at the micro level. At the macro level, I examine the effects of time, ongoing events and negative reports. The study demonstrates that time plays an important role in influencing the emotional expressions of content consumers. Initially during Week 1, I found that sad responses were associated with the reminiscing of the individual’s past. Specifically, Jackson’s demise triggered a sense of nostalgic loss associated with past memories such as of childhood and family. Indeed, Marris (1974) has suggested that the fundamental crisis of bereavement is not the loss of the other, but the loss of self. However, by Week 2 and 3, the emotions experienced were triggered by other ongoing events in the environment (e.g. Jackson’s memorial service). These events seemed to distract content consumers away from indulging in their grief. In sum, the work suggests that the emotions experienced by users may evolve rather quickly due to ongoing events in their social environments.

The results also indicate that accessing information from YouTube (media) and allowing content consumers (audience) to respond can help them understand their emotional states and/or help other individuals (other members of the audience) to comprehend the emotions they experience following Jackson’s death. This suggests that the emotional expressions or exchanges on YouTube can be a source of comfort to others following the death of a public figure. On one hand, the results suggest that the societal system (e.g. ongoing events) may play an important role in affecting the emotional dependence users have on YouTube. On the other hand, the results also suggest that users may seek information and express emotions in social networking sites to help them to understand where they fit within the societal system. This illustrates the complex bi-directional influence of the societal system within the audience–media–society relationship.

Audience

I found that both genders were as likely to express emotions on YouTube contrary to numerous studies of social networking sites (e.g. Hargittai, 2007). The effects of gender only became apparent when I examined the type of emotional expressions and the interaction with time. First, I found that males and females have different emotional responses to negative reports about Jackson. Specifically, males were more likely to express anger while females were more likely to express sadness in defending Jackson’s legacy. Females were also more likely than males to provide emotional support by responding to messages by others. For instance, a female content consumer responded to a grieving message by writing, ‘it is sad that he died … he’s lost but never Forgotton!♥ its okay honey don’t cry … iLy!:].’

Second, females appeared to hold to their emotions for a longer duration than their male counterparts. I found that by Week 3, more females expressed sad comments than males. I believe that this is due to the fact that male content consumers had moved on to a new topic of interest by then, while female content consumers were still dwelling on their sad emotions triggered by Jackson’s death. I hypothesize that the ability to participate in information production in social media probably enabled males to move to a new topic quickly. This suggests that males process and respond to new information differently from females, and as such create different dependency relations with the media. Overall, the findings on gender effects are consistent with the literature on grieving which shows that grieving styles of females usually involve overt expressions of emotion and the seeking of support from others through talk, while the grieving style of males involves a more introverted handling of emotion and greater self-reliance through activity (Musambira et al., 2007).

Further, from the perspective of the audience, the results suggest the media dependency relationship from the original conceptualization of MSD is different in the context of social networking sites. Specifically, individuals are empowered as they are no longer passive receivers of information from the media (Pauwels and Hellriegel, 2009). Rather, they can now rely on multiple sources for information (i.e. other users) and more importantly, they can be producers of information. Some researchers have coined the term ‘prosumer’ (a contraction of the terms ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’) to describe the active role users play in creating content (Toffler, 1980; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). The study suggests that through the use of YouTube (media), prosumers are capable of fulfilling their own emotional needs as well as the needs of other audience members, indicating the media dependency of a prosumer on a social networking site is indeed different from that of a consumer in traditional media.

In sum, the results echo that of recent research which suggests that social networking sites and other Web 2.0 applications are very complex phenomena (e.g. having both micro and macro effects) that serve many purposes, some of which could not have been foreseen by the originators (e.g. Pauwels and Hellriegel, 2009). Specifically, the study highlights the complex bi-directional dependency in the audience–media–society relationship. At the media level, the emotional responses contributed by content consumers on YouTube enable the platform to function like an online support system. At the society level, the emotional responses help to connect with the wider community-in-mourning and promote greater understanding of the feelings of those in the society who are affected by the death of a public figure. Overall, the study shows that YouTube affords the emotional dependence users may need following the death of a public figure. By studying the emotional responses and uncovering the micro and macro effects of the media, the findings allow individuals to make more appropriate and informed decisions about the media content they consume on YouTube.

Conclusion

In this research, I investigate the use of social networking sites in response to the death of a public figure and celebrity, Michael Jackson. Using YouTube as the platform in the work, I uncovered the four main emotions expressed by the content consumers: sadness/disappointment, anger/frustration/disgust, happy/joy and pride/love. I also found that emotions conveyed may change over time due to a number of reasons. Initially, they experience sadness, mourn the loss of the public figure, and reminisce about him or her. Subsequently, their emotions are influenced by other external events that occur. In terms of gender, I found that men and women have different emotional responses.

An important implication of the research is that YouTube facilitates the grieving process by allowing one to seek information and express emotions. The content provided by YouTube and the subsequent expression of emotions play an important role in dealing with death as they have the ability to cultivate an environment where users may comfortably express their views, feelings and experiences. This is especially pertinent in the case of a public figure such as Jackson where the significant majority of grievers are not directly related or have access to the deceased, and are geographically dispersed.

Additionally, the study leads to a better appreciation of online emotional expressions due to bereavement. By delving into how males and females grieve over time, and how they emotionally respond to information received and events happening around them, better ways to help different genders manage their grief can be developed (Rack et al., 2008). For example, knowing that social networking sites are used by people to express their emotions means that researchers should consider developing online grief management strategies. As well, the finding that males and females respond differently to negative reports about the bereaved would help comforters tailor their messages of consolation.

There are some limitations in this study that could be addressed. First, only one social networking site, YouTube, was examined. Users of other services such as Facebook might differ in their usage patterns; this requires separate investigation. Further, only one event (albeit a significant one) was studied – the death of Jackson. Investigating emotional expressions in other events would allow for better generalizability of results. Next, I collected data only from the time period of 26 June 2009 to 16 July 2009. Although this covers a major period in the response to Jackson’s death, it is conceivable that data from other periods may yield patterns not uncovered in this work. Further, I only include comments from users who have indicated their gender profiles on YouTube. As such, users who chose not to indicate their gender were excluded from the data collection. I acknowledge that this may introduce biases in the findings.

While the scope of the present study did not distinguish between genres (e.g. music videos), there could be possible effects on the emotions experienced and expressed, warranting possible future research. Finally, it will also be worthwhile to replicate the study to include other demographic variables such as age, personality and geographical locality, and investigate their influence on emotional responses in the grieving process.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Bee Hoon Chua, Chee Liang Tan and Lin Li for assisting in data collection and coding. The author is also extremely grateful to Associate Professor Dion Goh for his valuable comments on earlier drafts.

This work was supported by Nanyang Technological University Academic Research Fund Program [Grant No 59/09].

Author biography

Chei Sian Lee is currently an Assistant Professor in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. She obtained her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her primary research interests are computer-mediated communication, distributed work environment and social computing. Her work has been widely published in international journals and conference proceedings.

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