Remembering the voice: Exploring information and sentiment in voicemail archival practices

Abstract

This study examines preservation of voicemail artifacts. Applying an exploratory approach through grounded theory, participants ( N = 52) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk provided common reasons for retaining voicemail artifacts. Results highlighted why participants retained or deleted general and specific voicemails. Five categories, past-focused, important, future-focused, sentimental, and neglectful, represented retaining reasons. The oldest and most important artifacts represented sentimental messages. Three categories, past-focused, technological affordance, and unremarkable or undesirable calls, represented reasons for deletion. Voicemails are paralleled to mass and interpersonal communication and implications make connections between information retention, temporality, and interpersonal memorialization. Findings indicate that asynchronous communication exchanges and relics, such as voicemails, offer linkages to and reverberations of old and emerging technologies.

Holding on and letting go: Memory, nostalgia, and effects of virtual possession management practices on post-breakup adjustment

“…Researchers have argued that online intimacy transcends proximal and temporal limitations creating the ability to continue closeness and connectivity. LeFebvre and Haggadone (2018) explored the reasons why people kept or deleted specific voicemails and found that some of the most beloved retained messages were the oldest ones. They also found that many unwanted voicemails were soon deleted after their creation, thereby suggesting that people, at least in part, actively choose to distance themselves from reminders of negative events, experiences, or relationships.…”

Deathlogging: GoPros as forensic media in accidental sporting deaths

“…Similarly, questions of how digital media transform human relationships to death have also generated important research into the accounting, experience and memorialization of human death (Arnold et al, 2018). Some research centers on processes of commemoration, such as saving voicemails of those who have died (LeFebvre and Haggadone, 2019). In other instances, the death itself is pathologized, such as when those who die while in the process of taking a ‘selfie’ (Maddox, 2017; Scott, 2018).…”