Cyberthanathology: Death and beyond in the digital age

Beaunoyer, Elisabeth; Guitton, Matthieu J.

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2021.106849

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Building on Shoshana Zuboff's call to protect our ‘elemental epistemic rights’ from ‘capitalist surveillance’, Tackett (2021) wonders if this should extend to the dead also: ‘do we need a necroethics?’. Cyberthanathology is fraught with theoretical and practical ethical issues (Beaunoyer and Guitton 2021); at the very least, some argue, digital remains also deserve to be treated with dignity and have their moral rights recognised (Lambert et al 2018), just as physical corpses do (Öhman and Floridi 2017).…”

Section: Myheritage Generative Ai and Ethical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have explored 'digital immortality' within the context of social networks (Bassett 2022;Harrington 2020;Kania-Lundholm 2019;Kasket 2019;Öhman and Watson 2019;Savin-Baden et al 2017;Sisto 2020, Stokes 2015, and there is formative work on death-tech more generally (Arnold et al 2017;Biçer and Yıldırım 2022) and AI and death more specifically (Meese et al 2015;Savin-Baden 2021). Within this framework of what has been termed thanatechnology (Sofka et al 2012), cyberthanatechnology (Beaunoyer and Guitton 2021) and necro-technology (Nansen et al 2023), our focus here is on the ethical entanglements of reviving the dead online within the context of genealogy platforms and exploring what algorithmic revivification and remediation might entail for psychosocial mnemonic practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within this framework of what has been termed thanatechnology (Sofka et al . 2012), cyberthanatechnology (Beaunoyer and Guitton 2021) and necro-technology (Nansen et al . 2023), our focus here is on the ethical entanglements of reviving the dead online within the context of genealogy platforms and exploring what algorithmic revivification and remediation might entail for psychosocial mnemonic practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

Nieto McAvoy,

Kidd

2024

Mem. Mind & Media

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Services offered by genealogy companies are increasingly underpinned by computational remediation and algorithmic power. Users are encouraged to employ a variety of mobile web and app plug-ins to create progressively more sophisticated forms of synthetic media featuring their (often deceased) ancestors. As the promotion of deepfake and voice-synthesizing technologies intensifies within genealogical contexts – aggrandised as mechanisms for ‘bringing people back to life’ – we argue it is crucial that we critically examine these processes and the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin them, as well as their mnemonic impacts. In this article, we present a study of two AI-enabled services released by the genealogy company MyHeritage: Deep Nostalgia (launched 2020), and DeepStory (2022). We carry out a close critical reading of these services and the outputs they produce which we understand as examples of ‘remediated memory’ (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023) shaped by corporate interests. We examine the distribution of agency where the promotion by these platforms of unique and personalised experiences comes into tension with the propensity of algorithms to homogenise. The analysis intersects with nascent ethical debates about the exploitative and extractive qualities machine learning. Our research unpacks the social and (techno-)material implications of these technologies, demonstrating an enduring individual and collective need to connect with our past(s), and to test and extend our memories and recollections through increasingly intense and proximate new media formats.

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Section: Myheritage Generative Ai and Ethical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

Nieto McAvoy,

Kidd

2024

Mem. Mind & Media

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“…The iJournal, Vol 9, No. 1, Fall 2023 grief (Beaunoyer & Guitton, 2021). Lavish and obsessive practices of mourning and memoria emerged (Bennett & Huberman, 2015).…”

Section: Analogue Mourning In the Western Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Uncharted Liminality

Davoudi

2023

iJournal

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Every day, approximately 8,000 Facebook users die worldwide, leaving behind an online reflection of their lives on the platform. Their digital remains are transforming platforms like Facebook into memorial spaces for the deceased and communal places of mourning for the bereaved. By employing an extensive scoping review of current scholarly literature, this paper aims to examine the current discourse surrounding digital mourning and evaluate the influence of social media platforms on mourning practices within the Western context. These findings illustrate how social media platforms support the grief work of individuals and communities through the exploration of frameworks that conceptualize mourning and memoria in the digital age.

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“…Therefore, the highly public nature of cybersuicide contradicts long-held beliefs of offline suicide that suicide should be a personal and private action ( 8 , 9 ). This contradiction implies the internet is changing the context and socio-cultural norms of death-related behaviors and phenomena, which may influence the way people perceive and respond to suicide ( 10 , 11 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind the gap: Exploring differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide

Jiao²

2023

Front. Public Health

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IntroductionThe highly public nature of cybersuicide contradicts long-held beliefs of offline suicide, which may cause differences in the way people perceive and respond to both of them. However, knowledge of whether and how suicide literacy differs between cybersuicide and offline suicide is limited.MethodsBy analyzing social media data, this paper focused on livestreamed suicide and aimed to compare suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide on three aspects, including false knowledge structure, extent of association with stigma, and linguistic expression pattern. 7,236 Sina Weibo posts with relevant keywords were downloaded and analyzed. First, a content analysis was performed by human coders to determine whether each post reflected suicide-related false knowledge and stigma. Second, a text analysis was conducted using the Simplified Chinese version of LIWC software to automatically extract psycholinguistic features from each post. Third, based on selected features, classification models were developed using machine learning techniques to differentiate false knowledge of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide.ResultsResults showed that, first, cybersuicide-related posts generally reflected more false knowledge than offline suicide-related posts (χ12=255.13, p < 0.001). Significant differences were also observed in seven false knowledge types. Second, among posts reflecting false knowledge, cybersuicide-related posts generally carried more stigma than offline suicide-related posts (χ12 = 116.77, p < 0.001). Significant differences were also observed in three false knowledge types. Third, among established classification models, the highest F1 value reached 0.70.DiscussionThe findings provide evidence of differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide, and indicate the need for public awareness campaigns that specifically target cybersuicide.

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Cyberthanathology: Death and beyond in the digital age

Cited by 13 publications

References 56 publications

Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

Synthetic Heritage: Online platforms, deceptive genealogy and the ethics of algorithmically generated memory

An Uncharted Liminality

Mind the gap: Exploring differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide

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