Death and grief on-line: Virtual memorialization and changing concepts of childhood death and parental bereavement on the Internet

Mitchell, Lisa M.; Stephenson, Peter H.; Cadell, Susan; Macdonald, Mary Ellen

doi:10.5172/hesr.2012.21.4.413

Cited by 51 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…For example, Mitchell et al (2012) found that parents who create online memorial sites for their deceased children often keep the communication going for years after the child's death, indicating that even small pieces of information may function as surrogate for the deceased. Mitchell et al (2012) explain this phenomenon as a result of the unique affordances of online technologies, in which the deceased may appear almost as if still alive, and they do subsequently warn against over usage of online memorials. Similarly, Stokes (2012) uses Floridian (2013 ethics to show that such data deserves to be treated as a moral patient in itself.…”

Section: Social Media Users As Micro Celebritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One example is Mitchell et al (2012) study of online memorials for deceased children, where the authors point out ''the affordances of the Web'' (Mitchell et al 2012, 28) as a driving cause behind prolonged grief:…”

Section: Conceptualising the Digital Afterlifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This causes situations that closely resemble the typical conflict between record labels and family members of deceased music artists. Digital policy scholars have therefore repeatedly highlighted the alarming lack of legislation needed to address the conflict over data heritage (Carroll et al 2015;Laouris 2015;McCallig 2013;Mayer-Schönberger 2009). In most countries, courts have no specific instructions regarding the issue, and therefore no guidelines to follow when endeavouring to reach a decision.…”

Section: Social Media Users As Micro Celebritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, the study ties together several different research areas. It allows one to identify systematically connections between policy oriented (Laouris 2015;McCallig 2013), philosophical (Stokes 2015;Swan and Howard 2012;Steinhart;2007) and more empirically grounded research (Grimm and Chiasson 2014;Mitchell et al 2012), as these research fields can all be related to the economics of digital afterlife.…”

Section: Conceptualising the Digital Afterlifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, there is a lack of critical economic approaches in the literature (Meese et al 2015, 416). Both sociological (Mitchell et al 2012;Walter 2015) and legal studies (Mayer-Schönberger 2009;McCallig 2013) have mainly focused on cultural and social practices regarding death online. In doing so, they merely account for the role of technology and have thus left economics and ethics relatively unexplored.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The Political Economy of Death in the Age of Information: A Critical Approach to the Digital Afterlife Industry

Öhman

Floridi

2017

Minds & Machines

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Online technologies enable vast amounts of data to outlive their producers online, thereby giving rise to a new, digital form of afterlife presence. Although researchers have begun investigating the nature of such presence, academic literature has until now failed to acknowledge the role of commercial interests in shaping it. The goal of this paper is to analyse what those interests are and what ethical consequences they may have. This goal is pursued in three steps. First, we introduce the concept of the Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI), and define it as an object of study. Second, we identify the politico-economic interests of the DAI. For this purpose, we develop an analytical approach based on an informational interpretation of Marxian economics. Third, we explain the practical manifestations of the interests using four real life cases. The findings expose the incentives of the DAI to alter what is referred to as the ''informational bodies'' of the dead, which in turn is to be seen as a violation of the principle of human dignity. To prevent such consequences, we argue that the ethical conventions that guide trade with remains of organic bodies may serve as a good model for future regulation of DAI.

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Section: Social Media Users As Micro Celebritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptualising the Digital Afterlifementioning

confidence: 99%