Abstract
Reviewed by: Carla J. Sofka, Siena College, Loudonville, NY, USA
In the introduction to their edited book Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age, Christopher M. Moreman and A. David Lewis note that the “population of individuals who experience dying, death, mourning, grieving, and even mortality itself as a hybrid between the physical and the digital (described as ‘hybrid mortality’ by the editors) has grown in such number that it has become the focus of academic discussion” (p. 2). They sought to gather a broad range of approaches to the topic; while several of the chapters in this fascinating collection reflect a religious studies or theological perspective (most likely a result of prior presentation of some of the material at conferences of the American Academy of Religion), the editors succeeded in recruiting authors from a diverse range of disciplines and specializations, including but not limited to psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, English, anthropology, computing and information systems, experimental digital media, and interactive media design.
The book includes 12 chapters organized into three sections: Part I: Death, Mourning, and Social Media; Part II: Online Memorialization and Digital Legacies; and Part III: Virtual Worlds beyond Death. The four chapters in Part I provide opportunities for a reader to contemplate the theological implications of postings on social networking sites, to explore how a deceased person’s Facebook profile is “transformed from a tool for communication and autobiography to one for mourning and memorializing, and back again” (Heidi Ebert, Chapter 2, “Profiles of the Dead: Mourning and Memorial on Facebook,” pp. 23–24), to explore how Facebook has “permanently… altered religiocultural constructs of grieving by transcending their conventional temporal, spatial, and social boundaries” (Ari Stillman, Chapter 3, “Virtual Graveyard: Facebook, Death, and Existential Critique,” p. 43), and to examine how recent social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest) have altered the expression of grief online. In Chapter 4, “Tweeting Death, Posting Photos, and Pinning Memorials: Remembering the Dead in Bits and Pieces” Candi K. Cann observes that the use of these new platforms reflects a shift from semiprivate to completely public space. She notes that due to the searchable nature of these social media platforms, documentation and analysis of these trends by social scientists is feasible on a broader scale.
In Part II: Online Memorialization and Digital Legacies, chapter authors investigate online memorialization and digital legacies from several points of view. These include the rise of the digital obituary and the creation of a “sepulchral hierarchy” (Michael Arntfield, Chapter 8, “eMemoriam: Digital Necrologies, Virtual Remembrance, and the Question of Permanence,” pp. 104–105) or status system among the digital dead, the emergence of the “restless dead” (Bjorn Nansen, Michael Arnold, Martin Gibbs, and Tamara Kohn, Chapter 6: “The Restless Dead in the Digital Cemetery”) due to the creation of digital applications, products, and services that interact with the physical space of the cemetery, and the social value of digital ghosts and digital legacies. A unique contribution in this section of the book comes from Rebecca Moore, who in Chapter 8, “Mythopoesis, Digital Democracy, and the Legacy of the Jonestown Website” presents a case study of the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, a website she established in 1998. Moore poignantly describes how the site serves multiple purposes including as a digital archive for historical documents, as a cyber memorial to those who perished, and as a resource to assist bereaved family members in coping with their disenfranchised grief.
As noted by the editors in their introduction to the book, Part III: Virtual Worlds beyond Death, “easily constitutes the ‘beyond’ of our title” (p. 5). The four chapters in this section cover topics that are unique from most chapters in previously published books. Two chapters take the reader into the realm of both video gaming and massively multiplayer online role-playing games. If you have ever wondered why (or how) someone would grieve the death of a fictional character from a TV show, Erica Hurwitz Andrus in Chapter 9, “Remembering Laura Roslin: Fictional Death and a Real Bereavement Community Online,” uses the RememberLaura online memorial community that grew on the LiveJournal website when the television show Battlestar Galactica ended in 2009, to provide you with answers.
Although Moreman and Lewis state “none of these chapters requires an a priori knowledge either of data or theory in order to be understood” (p. 5), Denise Kera’s Chapter 10, “Necromedia - Reversed Ontogeny or Posthuman Evolution?” was an exception for me. Since I have never read Nabokov’s The Origin of Laura or Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream, it was difficult to evaluate this chapter.
Most of the chapters in Digital Death are descriptive and conceptual in nature, drawing upon observations of the authors and examples rather than empirical data. However, in Chapter 7, “The Social Value of Digital Ghosts” Pam Briggs and Lisa Thomas summarize data findings from a study conducted with adults (ages 56–76) to learn about their reactions to new technologies related to digital legacies and lifelogging. Readers will become familiar with the ever-growing vocabulary required to consider how online resources, social media, and interactions in virtual worlds impact the way that our society deals with death and grief (e.g., digital religion, posthumous social presence, telecopresence, social necrophilia, the “restless dead,” technology heirlooms, necromedia, permadeath, and thanosensitive design, to highlight a few). In addition to being able to create a rich glossary of terms from the content in this book, a reader hoping to compile a fairly comprehensive reference list on these topics will benefit not only from the rich source notes found in each chapter but also the 17-page “Bibliography” section compiled by the editors.
Moreman and Lewis set out to create a book that would facilitate interdisciplinary applications of the content and help “the coming scholar who might recognize our humble attempt and will have the vision to take it further still. That is, we await the next set of thinkers to take us even further beyond” (p. 5). This book certainly has the potential to stimulate fascinating interdisciplinary exchanges. This reviewer is hopeful that academics, researchers, clinicians, and educators will find ways to develop creative partnerships as a result of these discussions. As a social work educator and academic who has studied how online resources and digital/social media are impacting the ways that our society deals with death and grief, I look forward to reading about the outcomes of these future conversations.