Pandemic retelling: What GoFundMe posts reveal about the socioeconomic context of COVID-19 death and bereavement among Latinx and Spanish-speaking communities in the United States

Abstract

COVID-19 has had an outsized impact on Latinx communities in the United States, turning thousands of individuals into newly bereaved survivors. Despite an eagerness among scholars to document social inequities in COVID-19, data limitations prevent a deeper understanding of the socioeconomic context of COVID-19 death. This study explores the social relationships, economic factors, and emotional experiences that surround COVID-19 deaths among the members of Spanish-speaking Latinx communities in the United States, as retold in user-written posts on the GoFundMe crowdfunding platform. GoFundMe posts for funeral and related expenses in the aftermath of a COVID-19 death are an unexplored source of information about the impacts of COVID-19 mortality inequities on the health and well-being of bereaved individuals. First, we used computational query methods to systematically identify a sample of Spanish-language/bilingual GoFundMe posts from U.S. locations referencing the death of someone due to COVID-19. After excluding posts that did not meet search criteria, we used deductive and inductive coding to analyze a corpus of selected posts (n = 68). We found that a more complete story about the social context of COVID-19 deaths in Latinx and Spanish-speaking communities includes a focus on family roles and responsibilities, compounded financial hardship, risk of complicated grief, religiosity, and unexpected death. Our exploratory study highlights the need for further research into the contextualized health and well-being impacts of COVID-19 bereavement for structurally marginalized communities.