Death in social media : the digital afterlife

From the beginning of known human history people have devised ways of providing enduring links between the living and the dead. In this century, as people increasingly live online, archives are being generated for them, mostly without their knowledge. For those who are no longer alive, these remnants and traces form an automatically generated obituary of sorts, a lasting tribute which cannot be easily removed, modified or contested. However, the Internet is also a space for intentional memorialisation, in the form of online memorials of many different kinds. Intentional online memorial practices by way of memorial sites are increasingly being integrated into everyday social interactions using social media. What are these 'sites'? What forms do they take? How are they functionally different from physical sites of remembrance? Online memorialisation is still a very new field of critical inquiry. These practices have been the focus of sociological and psychological studies, and they have also been considered in terms of interaction design and human-computer interaction, but they have not received the same attention from interdisciplinary perspectives. The implications of this research are wide. The topic has relevance for fields ranging from journalism and media studies to clinical practice, opening up new opportunities for understanding changing concepts of identity, community and memory in the digital era.