Mouring is a term connected not only to psychological phenomena but also to customs and habits created by different cultres. Every civlization, and every tribe had it's own way with dealing with the death of the people important to the group. Whether it was a king, a chiefmen, a pope or a sage the culture determined how to deal with the tragedy. Much is said about the cultural dimensions of ICT in regards to multiculturalism, the democaracy and so on. This time I was able to see the way ICT is connected to the phenomena as old as mankind - grief and death, death and grief.
My previous post regarding the National Tragedy in Poland had a rather emotional than cognitive approach. I decided to write one of my posts about the reaction of the people on the crash and further events in the Internet and show that it is the most democratic medium nowadays.
In Poland the most popular messenger is a Polish program called Gadu Gadu. One can set a status regarding his emotions, or whatever he or she feels like it. After the crash in Smolensk the status of the majority of people (in my contacts at least) dealt with the current situation. There were once like “I can’t believe it” or “Tragedy”. However, very soon the owner of the service decided to earn some money from the recent events. In Gadu Gadu if you send a premium sms you can pick one of the graphic status (extra paid). Very soon some people decided to choose the one with “National Mourning”
However, unlike the Polish TV the Internet allowed all kind of emotions to be let out. And so one could see a status like “What’s all the fuzz about. They have a back up copy of the president”.
Now for my favorite medium, which is Facebook. Very soon after the crash groups and sites of the tragedy were created. Every comment that I have seen was rather balanced and full of reflection. But after the decision about choosing the Wawel castle as the place of the President’s funeral all hell broke loose.
The Wawel Castle in Cracow is the national pantheon in Poland, and president Kaczyński was not the most popular politician. Due to the Polish tradition that you shouldn’t talk bad things about a dead person no one in the TV, no matter public or private had the guts to say that Kaczyński was not a hero in the eyes of many Poles.
However, Facebook users seemed not to care about the political correctness and several “No to Kaczyński on Wawel” groups were created. More than 30000 people joined the group within few hours. They organized protests in the real world and had to be acknowledged by the media. Not only in Poland. All over the World.
ICT allowed something that was unthinkable few years ago, when the Pope John Paul II died. Back than with social networks being just emerging in the TV you could only hear praises and simply propaganda claiming that everyone in Poland was mourning. It was several months later that some people said that the parts of the interviews that claimed the Pope to be controversial were cut out of the tapes. Now Internet makes the society more pluralistic and even if you find the group “I didn’t cry after the Pope” something not proper you have to acknowledge it’s existence.
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