Digital Death ─ Online Mourning Rituals and Practices

What happens to your social media profiles when you die? And what are the implications of this online presence for those of us who are left behind? It is becoming increasingly clear that, with the arrival of the internet, death cultures of today differ immensely from the death cultures of the previous centuries, and that mourning and honoring rituals in online environments are now on the brink of becoming the norm. Anna Haverinen examines these issues in this up-to-date and far-reaching investigation of online mourning cultures and digital memorialization. Based on new and extensive ethnographic material, this book investigates how, why and where people mourn online. It also explores ideas of space, place, identity and community within internet memorials including social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, online videos and blogs, multi-player role-playing games, virtual environments and memorial websites. As the author shows, technology has changed the way we grieve but it also offers new ways of helping society cope with bereavement by bringing people together during times of loss. As such, this book will be of interest to researchers concerned with grief, bereavement and death studies as well as scholars of anthropology, sociology, media and communication studies and social psychology. It will also appeal to anyone with an interest in digital culture and online practices in contemporary society.

Anna Haverinen is a Digital Culture PhD from the University of Turku, Finland. She has a background in anthropology, archaeology and museum studies, which lead to an interest to death rituals. As a Digital Culture scholar she is interested in gaming theory, virtual worlds, sense of space and place, identity and community in Web environments, as well as design anthropology.