Death on Facebook - Centro Studi Etnografia Digitale · Death on Facebook Mourning and memory as a...

Death on FacebookMourning and memory as a prosumer

activity for Social Media Users

Piergiorgio Degli EspostiUniversità di Bologna

domenica 18 settembre 11

Digital mediated grief• representation of death

• changes in mourning reactions

• cemetery as segregation of death

• death 2.0 the right to remember, the will to forget?


After death web serivces• data & blog maintanence

• email delivered after death

• obituaries &memorial

• wills


The daily death


Death & Sociology• E. Durkeim - funeral is a cerimony assembly that served the

pourpose of reaffirming the solidarity of the group.

• T. Parsons - active orientation contemporary society, deviant orientation fatalistic society.

• P. Berger's - death is an essential feature of the human condition that requires people to develop means of coping with it.

• W. Fuchs - natural death separation between traditional (arcaic) and modern world - magic and religious projections vs disenchantment.

• J. Baudrillard - death as the domain of nature up on culture, generates a mutual exchange between living society and dead - symbolic exchange


Private & Public Sphere

If We live in Public We also die in PublicDeath move from private to public trough media

• most mediated society ever experienced

• digital archives and digital footprints

• celebrity death


Hyperexchange

• separation (ghettoize) between live and dead

• social media seems to create new symbolic exchange with the dead


Memory weineesStructure that leads behaviors

• Centraly percieved

• Centally controlled

• Hi tech controlled

• Empty of distinctive content

Nothing Something ContinuumHow long may last the mutual exchange?May we speculate a zombification ofFB?


Disenchantment and Re-enchantement

• Romantic ethic

• New Age and Postmodern

• common nomenclature

• common origins the 60’s

• Rejections of enlightenment project (Campbell)

• End of death taboo (Giddens)

Reflexivity modernity• Removal of magical

(Weber)

• Calculability and Burocratization

• Social and economical control upon death

• Rationalization of time - Risk society (Beck)


Mourning as a prosumer activity

the 'death industry' has primarily had a split between those who

produced (the gravestones, caskets, and so on) and those

who consumed (us).

DEATH INDUSTRY DIY MEMORIALSVS

social media has made the consumers also the

producers of the mourning and memorializing process.


Facebook policy• Facebook used to immediately delete the

accounts of the deceased

• 2005 introduced “memorialize” profile (post and interest removed profile viewable only to friends)

• 2007 After Virginia Tech shootings, the site changed its policy in response to the deluge of comments left on the victims' profile pages

• The "memorialization" process wasn’t officially announced since 2008 - before was an automatized process

• Relatives or friends has to fill a declaration form to annoumce a death


Facebook generational gap

May SNS risk to become digital graveyard or Dinosaurs of consumption?


Zombiesignificant other with

profile still active

Possible models for interpretation

Celebrityno personal knowledge

no profileMartyr

(heros or victims)no personal knowledge

possible profile

Phantoms significant other with memorialized profile


Possible models of interpretation

segregation sociality enchantement prosumption

CELEBRITY novideo

quotesphotogroups

limited medium

MARTYR partialvideo

quotesphotogroups

limited medium

PHANTOM partialvideo

quotesphotogroups

medium medium

ZOMBIE novideo

quotesphotogroupsapps

high high


Conclusions

• Prosumer activity turn something out of nothing

• There will still be the opportunity to deviate from centralized rules?

• Exist an hyper symbolic exchange?

• Will FB make obsolete graveyards (as the web did with the press, DVD and so on)?

• Could a closed and controlled system generate re-enchantemet?


Thank You!

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twitter.com/pgdedomenica 18 settembre 11

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Death on Facebook - Centro Studi Etnografia Digitale · Death on Facebook Mourning and memory as a...

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