Charlie Kirk's online mourning as ritual activity

This chapter investigates the online mourning of American right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk as a ritual media event and the construction of his death as that of a modern American martyr. The chapter draws theoretical inspiration from the study field of social media mourning and Victor Turner’s model of death rituals as a three-phase process: rupture, liminal phase, and new order. Empirically, the chapter is based on digital media ethnographic fieldwork conducted on social media and online news media between the time of Kirk’s death and his funeral in the autumn of 2025. The chapter argues that Kirk’s death offers an illuminating case study to explore online mourning as a contested ritual activity. While it demonstrates the power of online platforms to bring different actors together to participate in and contribute to collective, virtual ritualisation around death, it also manifests the current politics of mourning and symbolic battles over whose life is made grievable, by whom, and for what purpose. Finally, it asks how online ritual activities around mourning may serve a society immersed in spectacular death and digital communication.