#MournHub and @GrieveWatch: Mediating monarchy and mourning in the digital age

Abstract

Queen Elizabeth II's death in September 2022 prompted a predictable saturation of representations across all UK media. A lot of ‘traditional’ media, like the BBC, largely assumed, and hence attempted to reproduce, a hegemonic and unified response of national mourning. But some social media representations exposed a struggle over meaning, displaying ambivalence or even outright negativity towards the British monarchy and ‘national’ mourning practices. This article uses #MournHub and @GrieveWatch as two critical case studies to explore the complex meanings of the Queen's death across different communities and spaces. Doing so, this article illuminates the ambivalences of ‘national’ mourning, the intersectionality of class, race and national identity in shaping the tenor of people's responses to the Queen's death, the commercialisation and corporatisation of memorialising death and nationhood, the changing forms of royal mediations, and the careful staging of royal events.