Death, Social Networks and Virtual Worlds: A Look Into the Digital Afterlife

Braman, James; Dudley, Alfreda; Vincenti, Giovanni

doi:10.1109/sera.2011.35

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This research began with a literature review on related works and on issues of death and cultural practices on the web, such as posthumous interaction [12], death-related taboos and beliefs [13], Facebook memorial pages [10] and virtual memorials in general [4]. Then, we researched on Brazilian social software applications that work as digital memorials and found the following recent platforms: iHeaven [9], SaudadeEterna [25] (Eternal Missing) and Memorial Digital [18] (Digital Memorial).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the physical world, a memorial is "something, such as a monument or holiday, intended to celebrate or honor the memory of a person or an event" [2]. The practice of funeral rites, which involves building memorials in many societies, is considered by Structural Anthropology as the turning point between the state of nature and the state of culture [4]. Therefore, we are no longer common animals and become members of the human culture when we realize death is a different stage in the life cycle, which requires specific practices.…”

Section: Digital Memorialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Virtual Homage to the Dead: An Analysis of Digital Memorials in the Social Web

Lopes

Maciél

Pereira

2014

Social Computing and Social Media

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Considering that many real-world cultural practices are now migrating to virtual environments, the expression of mourning and bereavement is also being imported to the virtual world, by means of the so-called digital memorials, supported by increasingly new and complex technologies. In this paper, we undertake a literature review on real and digital memorials, as well as social networks. Then, through empirical observation of digital memorials in Brazil, we investigate if they have characteristics of the social web. Next, by means of an interaction test and a questionnaire, we analyze how users feel when interacting with digital memorials and their evaluation on the functionalities of those applications. Finally, we approach the difficulties found when studying this kind of tools and our perspectives for future works.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Digital Memorialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Homage to the Dead: An Analysis of Digital Memorials in the Social Web

Lopes

Maciél

Pereira

2014

Social Computing and Social Media

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The survival and presence of, and interaction with, digital fragments after death—traces, remains, personal information, and data—blurs the boundaries of analog life/death with digital life/death and for some suggests some sense of digital life after analog death (Mazzetti Latini et al, 2017). This idea in turn prompts consideration of what can and should be done with such materials (Braman et al, 2011) and, broadly, what it means to live and die in the age of digital technologies. Some people want to ensure that their digital materials survive and remain accessible to achieve what is called a digital afterlife , or persistent digital presence.…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

Dinneen,

Krtalić,

Davoudi

et al. 2023

Asso for Info Science & Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…The investigation and publication of these types of data and spaces should follow similar ethical guidelines to those now developed for the digitization of our analogue dead, namely in ensuring that affected parties are consulted. Another consideration for the archaeology of future digital content relates to the 'multiple or changing identities' adopted in online spaces (Braman et al 2011;Wertheim 1999). The idea of 'managing' the persona that humans present to posterity is nothing new: following her death, one of Queen Victoria's daughters typed up all of her personal correspondence and burned the originals.…”

Section: Implications For Archaeological Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Remains Made Public: Sharing the dead online and our future digital mortuary landscape

Ulguim¹

2018

AP Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We live in the information age, and our lives are increasingly digitized. Our quotidian has been transformed over the last fifty years by the adoption of innovative networking and computing technology. The digital world presents opportunities for public archaeology to engage, inform and interact with people globally. Yet, as more personal data are published online, there are growing concerns over privacy, security, and the long-term implications of sharing digital information. These concerns extend beyond the living, to the dead, and are thus important considerations for archaeologists who share the stories of past people online. This analysis argues that the ‘born-digital’ records of humanity may be considered as public digital mortuary landscapes, representing death, memorialization and commemoration. The potential for the analysis of digital data from these spaces could result in a phenomenon approaching immortality, whereby artificial intelligence is applied to the data of the dead. This paper investigates the ethics of a digital public archaeology of the dead while considering the future of our digital lives as mnemonic spaces, and their implications for the living.

show abstract

Death, Social Networks and Virtual Worlds: A Look Into the Digital Afterlife

Cited by 17 publications

References 8 publications

Virtual Homage to the Dead: An Analysis of Digital Memorials in the Social Web

Virtual Homage to the Dead: An Analysis of Digital Memorials in the Social Web

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

Digital Remains Made Public: Sharing the dead online and our future digital mortuary landscape

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About