“I Was Told to Come Back and Share This”: Social Media-Based Near-Death Experience Disclosures as Expressions of Spiritual Beliefs

Paper Title

“I Was Told to Come Back and Share This”: Social Media-Based Near-Death Experience Disclosures as Expressions of Spiritual Beliefs

Publication Info

• Topic area: Near-death experience (NDE) disclosures on social media and their spiritual dimensions.
• Keywords: Near-death experiences, TikTok, social media, spirituality, religious narratives, self-disclosure, identity clarification, audience engagement, thanatosensitivity, digital communities.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Limited research exists on how near-death experiences (NDEs) are disclosed and interpreted collaboratively on social media platforms, particularly regarding their spiritual and religious dimensions and interactive aspects.
• Significance: Understanding NDE disclosures on platforms like TikTok can reveal how individuals process trauma, articulate spiritual beliefs, and foster community engagement around sensitive topics like death and spirituality.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies have explored NDEs as psychological and spiritual phenomena but have not adequately examined their online expression or the role of audience interaction in shaping these narratives. This paper addresses these gaps by analyzing NDE disclosures on TikTok.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A mixed-method analysis of 200 TikTok videos tagged with NDE-related hashtags, focusing on narrative content, spiritual/religious framing, and audience engagement through comments.
• Novelty:
  1. Identification of three primary motivations for NDE disclosures: self-expression, identity clarification, and information sharing.
  2. Categorization of NDE narratives into Physiological Crisis Experiences (PCEs), Classical NDEs without spiritual content (NS-NDEs), and Classical NDEs with spiritual/religious content (S-NDEs).
  3. Analysis of comment cultures, including empathy, faith-based affirmations, and cognitive engagement, as well as their role in community building.
  4. Design implications for supporting respectful testimony sharing and fostering thanatosensitivity in digital spaces.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Data collection: 12,097 TikTok videos were initially gathered using NDE-related hashtags, filtered to 1,017 relevant videos, and further sampled down to 200 for detailed analysis.
  • Content analysis: Videos were coded into thematic categories (e.g., emotional, cognitive, spiritual) and narrative motivations.
  • Comment analysis: 1,943 comments were sampled and coded into eight themes, including support, faith, questioning, and personal narratives.
  • Ethical considerations: Strict adherence to IRB protocols, anonymization, and paraphrasing to protect user privacy.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • 79% of Classical NDEs included spiritual or religious themes (S-NDEs).
  • The three primary motivations for NDE disclosures were information sharing (most common), identity clarification, and self-expression.
  • Comment sections reflected high levels of empathy, gratitude, and faith-based affirmations, especially under S-NDE videos.
• Advantage over baselines: This study uniquely integrates narrative analysis with audience interaction, highlighting the co-construction of spiritual meaning in online spaces, which has been underexplored in prior research.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Dataset: 200 TikTok videos and 1,943 comments.
  • Metrics: Thematic coding of video content and comments; inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s κ = 0.79–0.83).
  • Categories: Emotional, cognitive, spiritual/religious, and supernatural experiences; six functional themes for narrative motivations.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Linguistic and regional bias: Exclusion of non-English videos limits cultural diversity.
  • Absence of creator interviews: Lack of direct insights into creators’ intentions and reflections.
  • Platform-specific constraints: Focused on TikTok, limiting generalizability to other platforms.
  • Limited visibility of negative interactions: Potential underrepresentation of conflict due to creator moderation.

Summary

This study analyzed how TikTok users disclose near-death experiences (NDEs) and how audiences engage with these narratives. It identified three primary motivations for disclosure—self-expression, identity clarification, and information sharing—and found that spiritual or religious themes appeared in 79% of Classical NDEs. Comments commonly expressed empathy, shared similar experiences, or discussed religious beliefs, with S-NDE videos eliciting more emotionally intense and faith-focused interactions. The findings suggest design strategies to support respectful testimony sharing and enhance thanatosensitivity in digital platforms. Future work could explore cross-cultural contexts, incorporate creator interviews, and examine platform-specific dynamics in greater depth.