Futures of digital death: Past, present and charting emerging research agenda

Sas, Corina; Schreiter, Miriam; Büscher, Monika; Gamba, Fiorenza; Coman, Alina

doi:10.1080/07481187.2019.1647643

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…As such, for Fang Fang, the disruption of the liminal rite of passage is heart-breaking, as she writes that 'I'm quite concerned for families that have lost someone […] they won't be able to handle this extended period of repression' (Fang, 2020: 234). With such statements, we could say Fang Fang is sharing and configuring ideas like what Sas et al (2019) calls the 'leveraging digital craft for helping bereaved people process grief' (411, our emphasis). Fang Fang not only expresses herself, but through what Kohn, Gibbs, Arnold, and Nansen.…”

Section: Liminalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast with physical memorials and institutionalized traditional burials, the use of digital images is turning into alternative vernacular forms of grieving, which are becoming mediators of the grieving process, at the same time as generating informal and personalized reactions about death and loss (Arnold, Gibbs, Kohn, Meese, & Nansen, 2017). We place the paper within this broader framework of digital mourning as a new phenomenon under researched within the context of COVID-19, acknowledging that more generally research on the technologies for grief and death-oriented online support rituals do exist (Sas, Schreiter, Büscher, Gamba, & Coman, 2019).…”

Section: Rites Of Passages In Deadly Timesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This online wall represents a more emotional reintegration with the sole purpose to crystalize a real collective grieving process, collective beyond a single person. Here social media becomes what Sas et al (2019) terms 'technologies for grief', which are designed to comfort bereaved people. Fang Fang's digital diary attempts to foster a more psychological comfort, and advocates for less political commemorations, for a nation that needs mutual support groups for all its spaces.…”

Section: Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Rite of Passage and Digital Mourning in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary

Whyke

Lopez-Mugica

Chen

2021

Global Media and China

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Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand how the diary mitigates the disturbances to mourning rituals inside and outside the confines of digital metaphysics. We argue that the digital diary mitigates these disruptions by allowing Chinese people to nourish their sorrow by identifying with the symbolic rites of passage and mourning rituals online at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan. In doing so, this article examines three stages of rite of passage, including separation, liminality and integration as they unfold in the diary, through which discourses and subjectivities based on collective and individual traumatic experiences are built, as a form of digital mourning that could reconcile both the official and the alternative voices of anonymous narratives about the handling of this crisis.

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Section: Liminalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rites Of Passages In Deadly Timesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Rite of Passage and Digital Mourning in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary

Whyke

Lopez-Mugica

Chen

2021

Global Media and China

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“…Indeed, we are living in an age with unforeseen capabilities to make both physical and digital "things" and where each person's life has an unavoidable associated trail of media and personal data. New opportunities to curate data and media to support others after our future death or to support ourselves in bereavement are substantial [14,18] and the contexts of anticipating end of life and living with bereavement are changing as digital technologies become more embedded in our cultures [13,15]. While it is easy to recognize that these opportunities for design are significant, and that the need is substantial and largely unaddressed, the barriers to working in a such sensitive context are perceived by many HCI researchers as overly daunting.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

HCI at End of Life & Beyond

Wallace

Odom

Montague

et al. 2020

Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Death, whilst an inevitable part of being alive, factors more significantly in our lives than the event itself. The role that technology can play in how people live as they approach end of life as well as in bereavement is full of rich possibilities, but research here is also fraught with ethical and methodological dilemmas. Although there has been a turn to focus on the topic of death by some in HCI we need to go far further to embrace the contexts relating to it more meaningfully and broadly. Through this design focused workshop, we will bring experts and interested parties together to creatively explore opportunities and challenges for HCI at the end of life and beyond. Discussions and design activities will be supported by conceptual resources for design, lived experience accounts, design methods and ethical resources. The workshop will provide a time and place to bring together experts but will also provide an open and accepting environment for those for whom HCI at end of life and beyond is a new area of concern.

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“…Increasing attention has been paid to technologies for grief, end of life, and digital possessions (Sas et al, 2019), and also to digital remains as big data (Karppi, 2018;Öhman & Watson, 2019). However, these perspectives often focus on the (important) question of how digital remains are mediated by corporate interests (as Facebook profiles especially), and less on the environmental impact of the mass-scale preservation required for such a model.…”

Section: Maintaining Digital Remainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burying the Dead (Users): A Life of Data Within Limits

Welsh

2020

SPIR

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Technological innovation depends on earthly resources. As such, the drive to continuous growth that has propelled technology forward is also in direct competition with a planet that is reaching capacity. This expansion and consumption model has both supported and neglected the data of the dead, which both proliferates and languishes. For example, as researchers across disciplines have noted, the dead may soon outnumber the living on social media. Questions about digital remains should attend not only to social media profiles but also to the life cycles of data. This paper considers environmental and resource-related questions about the traces we leave when we depart. To do this work, a theoretical methodological approach following the Computing within LIMITS model (Nardi et al, 2018) is employed to consider the accumulation of data that remains after users have departed from their earthly (and digital) lives. LIMITS is a sustainability model that asks researchers to (1) question growth, (2) consider models of scarcity, and (3) reduce energy and material consumption. That is, this paper questions the life of digital data that can be maintained and can even grow after a user passes on. In addition to questions about mourning, memorializing, and archiving the dead, the LIMITS model prompts ethical questions about how to bury our dead data responsibly and sustainably in the face of exponential growth.

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Futures of digital death: Past, present and charting emerging research agenda

Cited by 16 publications

References 25 publications

The Rite of Passage and Digital Mourning in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary

The Rite of Passage and Digital Mourning in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary

HCI at End of Life & Beyond

Burying the Dead (Users): A Life of Data Within Limits

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