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Death and Digital Media
Abstract
Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.
... O digital possui assim um papel particular na questão da morte, por um lado, por permitir uma ligação entre os domínios privado e público, trazendo esse tema para a vida quotidiana das redes de sociabilidade que vão para além da família imediata; por outro, por fornecer uma audiência para comunicações privadas com os mortos, como é o caso dos memoriais online (Walter et al., 2012). Tais memoriais revelam tendências para a comunicação entre enlutados, de enlutados para utilizadores fora das redes mais próximas (e.g., conhecidos, vizinhos), e, como se aludiu, para uma comunicação direta com os falecidos (Arnold et al., 2018;Vries & Rutherford, 2004). Ainda assim, estas características não são propriamente novas, desde logo no contexto de um velório físico, parecendo assistir-se mais propriamente a uma reconfiguração das práticas do que a um afastamento de práticas tradicionais. ...
... A maioria revela condolências comuns, com frases como "descanse em paz" ou "paz à sua alma". Sucede porém a já mencionada diversificação do alvo comunicacional, em que -como observável em Arnold et al. (2018) -ocorrem comunicações diretas para com o morto entre mensagens de alvo neutro e de outras diretamente dirigidas aos enlutados. Tais comunicações de caráter direto ao morto observam-se pela utilização (mesmo que omissa) da segunda pessoa singular, "tu" (e.g., "descansa"), ou, mediante o contexto interpessoal ou a idade (mais avançada) da pessoa, a utilização mais distante de um "você" omisso (e.g., "descanse"). ...
Este artigo debruça-se sobre o discurso de condolências por parte de utilizadores em obituários publicados por funerárias locais portuguesas no Facebook. Com o objetivo de compreender o discurso de luto e identificar dinâmicas comunitárias online, que dialogam com a comunidade física em que a funerária local se insere, optou-se por uma metodologia que alia princípios da análise crítica do discurso e da etnografia. Desta análise resultaram diversas considerações: revelaram-se espaços de elevada informalidade, visível ao nível da linguagem através da disseminação de erros gramaticais, pela utilização de elementos pictográficos (e.g., emojis), ou pela recorrência de utilizadores que produzem idênticos comentários nas publicações, independentemente de quem morre; motivaram contrastes discursivos, desde interações que poderão ser consideradas despropositadas até comentários que partilham experiências de luto; são espaços com potencial para lembrar, caracterizar e imaginar os mortos, através de relatos de histórias que o utilizador experienciou com a pessoa. É também argumentado que esta imensa diversidade é incentivada pela eficácia do Facebook em se integrar no quotidiano das pessoas e pelo seu caráter mediado que, incentivado pelo que parece ser uma carência de literacia emocional em contexto digital, parece desresponsabilizar certos utilizadores no discurso produzido.
... Yet, the conversations and frameworks around posthumous digital data in the Australian context remain limited. Pioneering work by Arnold et al. (2017) and Allison et al. (2023) highlight Australia's distinct societal attributes and further amplify the relevance of studying the management of digital data after death, as global solutions may not wholly cater to the specific needs and concerns of the Australian people. ...
The digital footprints of today's internet-active individuals are a testament to their lives, and have the potential to become digital legacies once they pass on. Future descendants of those alive today will greatly appreciate the unprecedented insight into the lives of their long since deceased ancestors, but this can only occur if today we have a process for data preservation and handover after death. Many prominent online platforms offer nebulous or altogether absent policies regarding posthumous data handling, and despite recent advances it is currently unclear who the average Australian would like their data to be managed after their death (i.e., social media platforms, a trusted individual, or another digital executor). While at present the management of deceased accounts is largely performed by the platform (e.g., Facebook), it is conceivable that many Australians may not trust such platforms to do so with integrity. This study aims to further the academic conversation around posthumous data by delving deeper into the preferences of the Australian Public regarding the management of their data after death, ultimately to inform future development of research programs and industry solutions. A survey of 1020 Australians revealed that most desired a level of control over how their data is managed after death. Australians currently prefer to entrust the management of their data to a trusted close individual or third party software that they can administrate themselves. As expected, social media companies ranked low regarding both trust and convenience to manage data after death. Future research focus should be to conceptualise and develop a third-party solution that enables these preferences to be realised. Such a solution could interface with the major online vendors (social media, cloud hosting etc.) to action the deceased's will.
... Finally, we consider MyHeritage as a site for reanimating the dead as the platform encourages and facilitates synthetic forms of 'algorithmic afterlife' (Lambert et al. 2018). A number of studies have explored 'digital immortality' within the context of social networks (Bassett 2022;Harrington 2020;Kania-Lundholm 2019;Kasket 2019;Öhman and Watson 2019;Savin-Baden et al. 2017;Sisto 2020, Stokes 2015, and there is formative work on death-tech more generally (Arnold et al. 2017;Biçer and Yıldırım 2022) and AI and death more specifically Savin-Baden 2021). Within this framework of what has been termed thanatechnology (Sofka et al. 2012), cyberthanatechnology (Beaunoyer and Guitton 2021) and necro-technology (Nansen et al. 2023), our focus here is on the ethical entanglements of reviving the dead online within the context of genealogy platforms and exploring what algorithmic revivification and remediation might entail for psychosocial mnemonic practices. ...
Services offered by genealogy companies are increasingly underpinned by computational remediation and algorithmic power. Users are encouraged to employ a variety of mobile web and app plug-ins to create progressively more sophisticated forms of synthetic media featuring their (often deceased) ancestors. As the promotion of deepfake and voice-synthesizing technologies intensifies within genealogical contexts – aggrandised as mechanisms for ‘bringing people back to life’ – we argue it is crucial that we critically examine these processes and the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin them, as well as their mnemonic impacts. In this article, we present a study of two AI-enabled services released by the genealogy company MyHeritage: Deep Nostalgia (launched 2020), and DeepStory (2022). We carry out a close critical reading of these services and the outputs they produce which we understand as examples of ‘remediated memory’ (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023) shaped by corporate interests. We examine the distribution of agency where the promotion by these platforms of unique and personalised experiences comes into tension with the propensity of algorithms to homogenise. The analysis intersects with nascent ethical debates about the exploitative and extractive qualities machine learning. Our research unpacks the social and (techno-)material implications of these technologies, demonstrating an enduring individual and collective need to connect with our past(s), and to test and extend our memories and recollections through increasingly intense and proximate new media formats.
... Indeed, rather than cooperation between human and machine, the person and digital technology are merged together, like in the cases of biological brains in a robot body, general-purpose brain implants, deep brain stimulation, and so on (Warwick, 2013). Furthermore, Archer has not considered the fact that the human person can survive beyond physical death through the digital person (Arnold et al., 2018), and that this fact creates new and serious problems of a psychological, social and legal kind. Is a friendship with a person who has physically died and whose digital identity remains on the web still friendship? ...
Margaret Archer addresses the fundamental question: does society make the human person or does the person make society? This question has gripped all social theory since the beginning of
modernity and gave rise to the well-known agency vs structure
debate. Archer proposes to overcome this debate by reformulating the problem within an innovative scheme (that of
morphostasis/morphogenesis) in which the human person
mediates between action and social structure through her own
personal reflexivity (internal conversation). The evaluation of this
theory highlights the importance of personal reflexivity, but
claims the relational character of reflexivity. Overall, the author
expresses some reservations about the entire Archerian approach
to the human person. The definition of reflexivity, as an individual
mental activity, underestimates the role of relationships and social networks, with the risk of providing an individualizing rather than a personalized vision of social agents/actors. This is demonstrated by the fact that in her latest works, Archer also
grants personality to sophisticated AI robots. In short, the
Archerian theory of the human person is a great contribution, but
it should be inserted in a properly relational vision.
This Afterword echoes our editors’ framing of this Special Issue as seeking to both sketch the ‘state of the art’ and indicate some ‘future avenues’ for research in digital death [...]
The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses challenges in the field of bioethics, especially concerning issues related to life and death. AI has permeated areas such as health and research, generating ethical dilemmas and questions about privacy, decision-making, and access to technology. Life and death have been recurring human concerns, particularly in connection with depression. AI has created systems like Thanabots or Deadbots, which digitally recreate deceased individuals and allow interactions with them. These systems rely on information generated by AI users during their lifetime, raising ethical and emotional questions about the authenticity and purpose of these recreations. AI acts as a mediator between life, death, and the human being, enabling a new form of communication with the deceased. However, this raises ethical issues such as informed consent from users and the limits of digital recreation. Companies offer services like the Digital Resurrection of deceased individuals and the generation of hyper-realistic avatars. Still, concerns arise about the authenticity of these representations and their long-term emotional impact. Interaction with Thanabots may alter perceptions of death and finitude, leading to a potential "postmortal society" where death is no longer viewed as a definitive end. Nevertheless, this raises questions about the value of life and the authenticity of human experiences. AI becomes a bridge between the living and the dead, partially replacing rituals and mystical beliefs. As technology advances, there will be a need for greater transparency in interacting with AI systems and ethical reflections on the role of these technologies in shaping perceptions of life and death. Ultimately, the question arises of whether we should allow the dead to rest in peace and how to balance the pursuit of emotional relief with authenticity and respect for the memory of the deceased. A deeper ethical consideration is needed on how AI alters traditional notions of life, death, and communication in contemporary society. In this research, an interdisciplinary approach was utilized to conduct a comprehensive systematic review of the recent academic literature, followed by a detailed analysis of two key texts. Central ideas were extracted, and recurring themes were identified. Finally, a reflective analysis of the findings was conducted, yielding significant conclusions and recommendations for future research.
Throughout human history, individuals, communities and societies have always had to confront and tackle the problem of death. Consequently, death remains a topic of social scientific relevance, highlighting the need for its study and for theorising around it. This article analyses the development of the social scientific study of death and dying, taking inspiration from Philippe Ariès’s historical stages to discuss the recent developments in the field, namely the study of digital death. The article begins with a discussion of the visibility of death in modern society in the context of spectacular death. The analysis emphasises its four dimensions: mediatisation, commercialisation, re-ritualisation and the revolution in end-of-life care. The article moves on to discuss the emergence of digital death as the current stage and reflects on its similarities to spectacular death and its transformation of public imaginaries around death in contemporary society. The article concludes with a reflection on future developments in the field, specifically the emergence and study of artificial intelligence (AI) in digitalised death culture.
The digital age has rekindled popular and academic interest in immortality. While the idea of immortality has long been recognized as fundamental to human societies, unlike death, within the field of sociology, immortality has not yet established itself as a distinct and autonomous field of study. This paper contributes to the recently emerging scholarship promoting a sociology of immortality. Drawing inspiration from C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination (1959) and building upon significant research in the field of immortality, we offer to use the concept of the immortological imagination as an analytical and conceptual tool for further developing a sociology of immortality. We refer to the immortological imagination as a complementary concept to Penfold-Mounce’s thanatological imagination, seeing both concepts as stemming from two different lineages and academic traditions. After defining the immortological imagination and how it differs from and complements the thanatological imagination, the paper moves to discuss examples in popular culture establishing the potential impacts and influences of the immortological imagination, particularly within the digital context.
Death is an inevitable part of life and highly relevant to information management: its approach often requires preparation, and its occurrence often demands a response. Many works in information science have acknowledged so much, and yet death is rarely a focused topic, appearing instead sporadically and disconnected across research. As a result there is no introduction to, overview of, or synthesis across studies on death and information. We therefore conducted an extensive literature search and reviewed nearly 300 scholarly publications at the intersection of death and information (and data) management. Covering seven topics in total, we review two groups of work directly engaging information management in relation to death (digital possessions, inheritance, and legacy; information behavior, needs, and practices around death), three engaging death and technology that require information and its management (death and the Internet, thanatosensitive design and technology‐augmented death practices, and the digital afterlife and digital immortality), and two reflecting the ethical and legal dimensions unique to death and information. We then integrate the collective findings to summarize the landscape of death‐related information research, outline remaining challenges for individuals, families, institutions, and society, and identify promising directions for future information science research.
Whereas standard approaches to risk and vulnerability presuppose a strict separation between humans and their world, this book develops an existential-phenomenological approach according to which we are always already beings-at-risk. Moreover, it is argued that in our struggle against vulnerability, we create new vulnerabilities and thereby transform ourselves as much as we transform the world. Responding to the discussion about human enhancement and information technologies, the book then shows that this dynamic-relational approach has important implications for the evaluation of new technologies and their risks. It calls for a normative anthropology of vulnerability that does not ask which objective risks are acceptable, how we can become invulnerable, or which technologies threaten human nature, but which vulnerability transformations we want. To the extent that we can steer the growth of new technologies at all, this tragic and sometimes comic project should therefore be guided by what we want to become.