Memorial Pages Research Articles

THE EMERGENCE OF NETWORKS ON FACEBOOK MEMORIAL PAGES

Facebook Pages is an essentially public sub-platform that allows users to reach an audience, create a large network of followers, and become admins. Pages’ official aim is to serve businesses, communities, and public figures, yet they are commonly employed in different aims: to memorialize and publicize ordinary people. This paper examines these practices through an in-depth qualitative analysis of eighteen cases, combined with a digital ethnography conducted between 2018-2021. Findings illuminate the role that these memorial Pages serve as social capital resources and reveal how admins negotiate Facebook affordances when creating, designing, and maintaining such Pages. Admins use the Page and its network of followers to run an extensive memorial activity, both online and offline, and to turn the deceased into a public figure. They discursively position the deceased as a special person whose story carries social significance and collective moral value, hence worth public remembering. Acts of engagement with the Page emerge as socially valued actions, and the followers, who are otherwise strangers, are framed as vital partners in this process. Admins use the followers to accumulate various resources: money donations, physical attendance in events, emotional support, and more. These amount to the social capital that admins generate. Finally, users form a causal connection between visible and measurable online engagement (Like, Share, Follow) and cognitive or emotive implications – public memory, recognition, and esteem. Together, these findings provide fruitful insights into social capital processes on social media sites, memorialization practices, and public remembrance.

Like, share, and remember: Facebook memorial Pages as social capital resources

AbstractThis study focuses on users’ practices involved in creating and maintaining Facebook memorial Pages by adapting the theoretical perspective of the social capital approach. It examines 18 Pages in Israel, which are dedicated to ordinary people who died in nonordinary circumstances. We employ qualitative analysis based on a digital ethnography conducted between 2018 and 2021. Our findings show how memorial Pages serve as social capital resources for admin users. Admins negotiate Facebook affordances when creating, designing, and maintaining such Pages. They discursively position the deceased as a respectable public figure worth remembering and their followers, who are otherwise strangers, as vital partners in this process. The resources followers provide range from economic capital and practical support to solidarity and emotional support. Finally, we point at the perceived connection users make between visible/measurable online engagement (Like, Share, Follow), and cognitive or emotive implications—public memory, recognition, and esteem.

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

COVID-19 mortality among Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and Transport Workers Union (TWU) workers-March-July 2020, New York City metro area.

BackgroundTransit workers have jobs requiring close public contact for extended periods of time, placing them at increased risk for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and more likely to have risk factors for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19)‐related complications. Collecting timely occupational data can help inform public health guidance for transit workers; however, it is difficult to collect during a public health emergency. We used nontraditional epidemiological surveillance methods to report demographics and job characteristics of transit workers reported to have died from COVID‐19.MethodsWe abstracted demographic and job characteristics from media scans on COVID‐19 related deaths and reviewed COVID‐19 memorial pages for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and Transport Workers Union (TWU). ATU and TWU provided a list of union members who died from COVID‐19 between March 1–July 7, 2020 and a total count of NYC metro area union members. Peer‐reviewed publications identified through a scientific literature search were used to compile comparison demographic statistics of NYC metro area transit workers. We analyzed and reported characteristics of ATU and TWU NYC metro area decedents.ResultsWe identified 118 ATU and TWU NYC metro area transit worker COVID‐19 decedents with an incidence proportion of 0.3%. Most decedents were male (83%); median age was 58 years (range: 39–71). Median professional tenure was 20 years (range: 2–41 years). Operator (46%) was the most reported job classification. More than half of the decedents (57%) worked in positions associated with close public contact.ConclusionData gathered through nontraditional epidemiological surveillance methods provided insight into risk factors among this workforce, demonstrating the need for mitigation plans for this workforce and informing transit worker COVID‐19 guidance as the pandemic progressed.

THE AFTERLIVES OF MEMORIAL MATERIALS: DATA, HOAX, BOT

The study of death online has often intersected with questions of trust, though such questions have evolved over time to not only include relations of trust between individuals and within online communities, but also issues of trust emerging through entanglements and interactions with the afterlives of memorial materials. Papers in this panel attend to the growing significance of the afterlives of digital data, the circulation of fake deaths, the care attached to memorial bots, and the intersection of robots and funerals.
 Over the last twenty years the study of death online developed into a diverse field of enquiry. Early literature addressed the emergence of webpages created as online memorials and focused on their function to commemorate individuals by extending memorial artefacts from physical to digital spaces for the bereaved to gather (De Vries and Rutherford, 2004; Roberts, 2004; Roberts and Vidal, 2000; Veale, 2004). The emergence of platforms for social networking in the mid-2000s broadened the scope of research to include increasingly knotted questions around the ethics, politics and economics of death online. Scholars began investigating issues like the performance of public mourning, our obligations to and management of the digital remains of the deceased, the affordances of platforms for sharing or trolling the dead, the extraction of value from the data of the deceased, and the ontology of entities that digitally persist (e.g. Brubaker and Callison-Burch, 2016; Gibbs et al., 2015; Karppi, 2013; Marwick and Ellison, 2012; Phillips, 2011; Stokes, 2012).
 Scaffolding this scholarship are a number of research networks, including the Death Online Research Network and the DeathTech Research Network, who encourage international collaboration and conversation around the study of death and digital media, including supporting this AoIR panel.
 This panel contributes to the growing field of research on death and digital media, and in particular poses challenges to focus on the commemoration of humans to encompass broader issues around the data and materiality of digital death. Digital residues of the deceased persist within and circulate through online spaces, enrolling users into new configurations of posthumous dependence on platforms, whilst at the same time digital afterlives now intersect with new technologies to create emergent forms of agency such as chatbots and robots that extend beyond the human, demanding to be considered within the sphere of digital memorialisation. Questions of trust emerge in this panel through various kinds of relationality formed with and through digital remains. These extend from relations of trust in the digital legacies now archived within platform architectures and how we might curate conversations differently around our personal data; to the breaking of trust in the internet when creating or sharing a hoax death; to the trust involved in making and caring for a posthumous bot; to the trust granted to robots to perform funerary rites.
 It is anticipated that this panel will not only appeal to scholars interested in the area of death and digital media, but also engage with broader scholarly communities in which questions of death now arise in larger debates around data, materiality, and governance on and of the internet.
 References
 Brubaker, J. R. and Callison-Burch, V. (2016) Legacy Contact: Designing and Implementing Post-mortem Stewardship at Facebook. Paper presented at CHI Workshop on Human Factors in Computer Systems, San Jose California.
 de Vries, B. and Rutherford, J. (2004) Memorializing Loved Ones on the World Wide Web. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49(1), 5-26.
 Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., Nansen, B., and Carter, M. (2015) #Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media and Platform Vernacular. Information Communication and Society, 18(3): 255-268.
 Karppi, T. (2013) Death proof: on the biopolitics and noopolitics of memorializing dead Facebook users. Culture Machine, 14, 1-20.
 Marwick, A. and Ellison, N. (2012) “There Isn’t Wifi in Heaven!” Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 56(3), 378–400.
 Phillips, W. (2011) LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages and Resistance to Grief Online. First Monday 16(12). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org
 Roberts, P. (2004) The Living and the Dead: Community in the Virtual Cemetery. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49(1), 57-76.
 Stokes, P. (2012) Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook? Philosophy and Technology, 25(3), 363-379.
 Veale, K. (2004) Online Memorialisation: The Web as a Collective Memorial Landscape For Remembering The Dead. The Fibreculture Journal, 3. Retrieved from http://three.fibreculturejournal.org

Reasons why we read blogs and memorial pages of people who lost a child. Life motives of emotional rubberneckers

Researchers have been interested in the subject of accompanying individuals who experienced a child’s terminal illness and death, sharing their grief online. Using The Reiss Motivation Profile and qualitative methods, the authors identified the life motives of emotional rubberneckers–grief blog and memorial page readers. Key reasons for the regular behavior of this kind are found: interest in the protagonist’s health, compassion, will to help, and sense of bonding. Such activity provides support to the respondents. Readers’ important life motives include the substantial need to care for their loved ones, to be needed, emotional stability, and a low need for power.

Death and Lulz: Understanding the personality characteristics of RIP trolls

Trolling on the Internet is a form of deviant behavior that borderlines cyberharassment. A specific type of trolling behavior involving individuals posting rude/harassing comments on online memorial pages is known as RIP or memorial page trolling. This study compared the personality traits of self-reported RIP trolls to other trolls who did not engage in RIP trolling (non-RIP trolls); 30 respondents were classified as RIP trolls and 119 respondents as non-RIP trolls. Results indicated RIP trolls scored significantly lower on conscientiousness and internal moral values compared to non-RIP trolls. Overall, trolls are not a homogenous group; further supporting the need for future research to explore individual differences within the trolling community. By understanding the personality and morality differences between trolls and non-trolls, we may be able to identify those individuals at risk for engaging in different forms of online harassment.

Use of Internet Resources to Support Prolonged Exposure for Combat-Related PTSD

In vivo exposure as part of Prolonged Exposure (PE) requires the patient and therapist to generate a list of cues that are reminiscent of the trauma and generative of distress. In contrast to civilian trauma, it can be more challenging to build a robust in vivo hierarchy for a combat-related index trauma. Internet resources such as databases that list casualties from different wars, memorial pages of those who died in theater, and lists of unit association memberships and reunions are useful sources for in vivo hierarchies. These materials can provide opportunities for exposure to additional cues reminiscent of the traumatic event, provide information about the traumatic event that the veteran had been unable to recall, and create opportunities for veterans to reestablish relationships with veteran peers. Case illustrations are provided and reasons for caution are discussed.

Till death do us part? Conversations with deceased celebrities through memorial pages on Facebook

ABSTRACTWithin the considerable body of research that the notion of parasocial interaction (PSI) has generated since the late 1950s, one aspect has been largely overlooked: the maintenance of one-sided relationships between fans and celebrities after the death of the latter. The present study focuses on this particular form of PSI, as reflected by memorial pages on Facebook dedicated to deceased public figures. Through a combination of content and theme analyses, we explored expressions of intimacy, role modelling, and identification by visitors of these pages and the subjects for whom these virtual shrines are designed. Corroborating findings from previous studies, our data revealed that a large number of postings serve a pseudo-dialogical function, allowing visitors to engage in public, unilateral ‘conversations’ with dead celebrities. Moreover, our analyses identified three recurrent themes underlying these pages: expansion of fans’ communicating capabilities across different dimensions of reality; legitimisation of a traditionally disenfranchised form of social engagement through grief; and tacit expansion of the economies of attention that sustain the culture of celebrities. These themes have important implications for future explorations of PSI in connection with broader institutional and social factors.

Women behaving badly: negative posts on Facebook memorial pages

ABSTRACTThis study explores negative posts in Facebook pages dedicated to dead subjects. As with places for mourning in offline environments, memorial pages in Facebook appear to exude a sacred character as objects to both celebrate the life of the deceased and grieve their departure with others. Through a two-step content analysis of an initial sample of 600 pages containing the ‘R.I.P.’ acronym in their title, we found, however, a number of posts violating conventional expectations of respect for these mourning spaces. Negative posts in memorial pages take the form of flames (i.e., insults directed at the subject of the page, its administrator, or other visitors), venting (e.g., violent language against the victimizers of the subject of a memorial page), or ‘spam’ (i.e., advertisement and content not related to the subject and purpose of the page). Moreover, while results show that most memorial pages in Facebook are created and maintained by women (even thought the subject in the majority of those pages are young males who died an untimely death), they also reveal that women post the majority of negative posts in those pages as well. In other words, whereas women seem to perpetuate traditional offline roles in connection to mourning and grieving rituals, in the online world, they are also the first ones challenging the socially sanctioned sacral attributes of those practices in social networking sites.

“I didn't know her, but...”

This article examines the use of six Danish “Rest in Peace” or RIP memorial pages. The article focuses on the relation between news media and RIP page use, in relation to general communicative prac...

Mourning 2.0--Continuing Bonds Between the Living and the Dead on Facebook.

This study examines the burgeoning phenomenon of Facebook memorial pages and how this research about online social networking environments can contribute to the existing literature related to Klass, Silverman, and Nickman (1996) continuing bonds thesis. I argue that memorial pages constitute a new ritualized and public space for maintaining these continued bonds and that individuals exhibit several types of bonding interactions with the deceased. I conducted a content analysis on a purposively selected sample of 12 public Facebook "pages" where I coded 1,270 individual Wall postings. Analyses demonstrated that many individuals routinely used these Walls to continue their relationships with the deceased. Findings revealed several Wall posting categories, "guidance from beyond and reunion with the deceased," "messages and visitations from the deceased," and "conversations with the deceased," which I then combined under a central thematic heading of "paranormal copresence." There were 267 Wall postings coded under "guidance and reunion," 26 for "messages and visitations," and 340 for "conversations," with the total of 633 Wall postings under the central thematic heading of paranormal copresence. This research highlights how individuals have transcended the limitations of time and physical space in relation to traditional bereavement behavior and rituals and how data found on public websites, such as Facebook, can be used to further theorize bereavement and to demonstrate continue bonds between the living and the dead.

“I didn't know her, but…”: parasocial mourning of mediated deaths on Facebook RIP pages

This article examines the use of six Danish “Rest in Peace” or (RIP) memorial pages. The article focuses on the relation between news media and RIP page use, in relation to general communicative practices on these pages. Based on an analysis of press coverage of the deaths of six young people and a close analysis of 1,015 comments extracted from the RIP pages created to memorialize them, it is shown that their deaths attracted considerable media attention, as did the RIP pages themselves. Comment activity seem to reflect the news stories in the way the commenters refer to the context of death and the emotional distress they experience, but mainly comments on the RIP pages are conventional expressions of sympathy and “RIP” wishes. The article concludes that public RIP pages might be understood as virtual spontaneous shrines, affording an emerging practice of “RIP-ing.”

Virtual Mourning and Memory Construction on Facebook

This article investigates the online information practices of persons grieving and mourning via Facebook. It examines how, or whether, these practices and Facebook’s terms of use policies have implications for the bereaved and/or the memory of the deceased. To explore these questions, we compared traditional publicly recorded asynchronous modes of grieving (i.e., obituaries) with Facebook’s asynchronous features (i.e., pages, photos, messages, profiles, comments). Additionally, by applying observational techniques to Facebook memorial pages and Facebook profiles, conducting a survey, and interviewing respondents as a follow-up to the survey, we examined the benefits of and issues surrounding online information sharing via Facebook when coping with the loss of another. We found that the immediacy of publishing comments, messages, wall posts, and photos provides Facebook mourners with a quick outlet for their emotions and a means of timely group support; however, these actions directly affect the online curation of the deceased’s self and memory and also create an environment of competition among mourners. The aforementioned benefits and complications of using Facebook during bereavement are shaped by the policies outlined by the social media platform.

The Social Media Contradiction: Data Mining and Digital Death

The Social Media Contradiction: Data Mining and Digital Death

Virtual mourning and memory construction on Facebook: Here are the terms of use

AbstractThis article investigates the online information practices of persons grieving and mourning the death of another via Facebook through an examination of how, or if, these practices and Facebook's terms of use policies have implications for those in mourning and/or the memory of the deceased. To explore these questions the researchers contrasted traditional publicly recorded asynchronous modes of grieving (i.e. obituaries) with Facebook's asynchronous features (i.e. pages, photos, messages, profiles, comments etc.) Additionally, by applying observational techniques to Facebook memorial pages and Facebook profile pages, conducting a survey, and following‐up on survey responses with interviews, the researchers examined the benefits and issues of online information sharing via Facebook when coping with loss. It was found that immediacy of publishing comments, messages, wall posts, photos, etc. provided Facebook mourners with a quick outlet for emotion and a means of timely group support via responding comments; however, these actions directly affect the deceased's online curation of self, memory, as well as created an environment of competition amongst the mourning. The aforementioned benefits and complications of using Facebook during bereavement are shaped by the policy outlined by Facebook, as Facebook's present policy leaves the deceased's surviving family and/or friends to change the status of the profile to be memorialized, close the profile account, or remove a memorial page; thus, leaving one's reputation beyond the grave in the hands of others.

“There Isn't Wifi in Heaven!” Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages

Today, social network sites are a key site for public displays of connection and grieving. Mourners weigh the benefits of publicness with the problems associated with large and diverse audiences. The replicability, scalability, persistence, and searchability features of networked publics influence both how mourners grieve and their control over depictions of the deceased. This article analyzes a corpus of posts and comments on Facebook memorial pages (N = 37). We examine how the social and technical affordances of social media, and Facebook in particular, affect public displays of grief and portrayals of the deceased. The visibility of social media both encourages performative displays of mourning and allows wider audiences to pay respects. This openness allows for context collapse and potentially unwelcome participants such as “trolls.” We consider the ways in which the publicness of the SNS memorial page affects displays of grieving, specifically around efforts to engage in impression management of the deceased.

R.I.P.: Remain in perpetuity. Facebook memorial pages

Facebook is not only a virtual space to commune with the living, it is also a place to honor, memorialize, and engage in dialogs with the deceased. This study examines 550 memorial pages on Facebook for age, gender, race, and cause of death of the memorialized, as well as to whom the communication is addressed. Where ritualistic memorials and mourning practices usually occur in cemeteries or at the sites of accidents, memorial sites on Facebook offer an alternative space to mourn that is public, collective, and with archival capabilities. Individual dialogs and memories in this alternative space are not private, and often involve direct communications with the deceased. In this way, the dead never really die; rather perpetually remain in a digital state of dialogic limbo.

A TRIBUTE TO A TRUE LASER PIONEER: THE LATE PROFESSOR ISAAC KAPLAN

Dear Readers, with this issue of the journal we sadly mark the passing of one of the true laser pioneers, even more sad because he was an active and founding member of both the ISLSM and WFSLMS, right up to the last meetings and a regular contributor to Laser Therapy. I am of course referring to Professor Isaac Kaplan, who died after a short illness on July 14th this year. Please read his Obituary elsewhere in this issue. However, I wanted to say a few personal words too, as Professor Kaplan was more than a true friend, he was one of my most respected mentors, and the father of our international laser family with his wife, Masha, as our mother, going all the way back to the 4th meeting of the ISLSM, Laser Tokyo 81. That is 33 years ago, but I can remember with clarity Isaac and Masha at that meeting, and you know, they have not changed much in that 33 years, except for the devastating fact that Isaac is no longer with us. Despite his tremendous standing in the laser community, he remained a man of the people, not at all conceited, but simple and very straightforward. If you ever said something he considered foolish, he could be too straightforward! But that was one of his charms: he always spoke straight from the heart. It is very hard for me personally to think that we will not see him at the forthcoming APALMS at the end of November in Taiwan, tall and almost as ramrod straight as always despite being in his 93rd year. We were looking forward very much to meeting up, and now that cannot happen. If you want to see and hear Professor Kaplan one more time, not in rhyme but in serious, pensive mode, please visit YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULTncCwulpM) and watch him address the Laser Tokyo 2009 joint meeting of the ISLSM, JSLSM and WFSLMS. The clip is sadly cut a little short, but it will remind you of the man and his contribution to the laser world, and to us all. As you know, ‘Kaplan's Corner’ was inaugurated as a regular feature by the journal to help celebrate the poetic gift which came to Isaac comparatively late in life. But true to his form, Prof Kaplan did not concentrate on flowers or trees or the sea or true love: he mostly wrote about the use of the CO2 laser, and in these poems there are some real educational gems as to the true extent of what the CO2 laser can be used for, and indeed what Isaac used it for, both by himself and in cooperation with other specialties. We also published his welcome remarks to various society meetings, all delivered in rhyming couplets. We plan to continue to include Kaplan's Corner in the journal as a memorial to Isaac's memory, as we have a few poems still in stock. Furthermore, just as we did for Dr Billie Aronoff, we want to create a series of memorial pages for Prof Kaplan, also published in Kaplan's Corner, sp please send us inn your memories, your pictures and your tributes and whatever you think appropriate to help celebrate the life of this great man. Please send them by email to moc.llmj@yparehtresal, by post to me at Japan Medical Laser Laboratory, Shinsei Kaikan 4th Floor, 32-2 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan 160-0016or by FAX to +81-3-5269-1410. This is not to mourn his passing, although of course it is quite right that we do this, but to help us remember how he was in life: a man with sparkling wit, genuine humor (that could occasionally be a bit acerbic!), tremendous intellect and great humility. Thank you in advance for your tributes and memories. We will be publishing the in installments, so please keep sending them in.

LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online

This paper examines the emergence of organized trolling behaviors on Facebook, specifically in relation to memorial groups and fan pages. In addition to mapping the development of RIP trolling — in which online instigators post abusive comments and images onto pages created for and dedicated to the deceased — the paper also examines the highly contentious and ultimately parasitic relationship(s) between memorial trolls, Facebook’s social networking platform and mainstream media outlets. Recalling Oring’s account of disaster humor, the paper goes on to suggest that, inadvertently or not, Facebook memorial page trolling presents a pointed critique of a tragedy–obsessed global media.