Streaming Death: Terrorist Violence, Post-death Data and the Digital Afterlife of Difficult Death

Theorising Digital Afterlife as Techno-Affective Assemblage: On Relationality, Materiality, and the Affective Potential of Data

“…The rights of these 'informational bodies' might be in stark contrast to the wishes of the bereaved (see also Birnhack and Morse 2022). Seeking continued digital presence of the dead is likewise motivated by the needs of the living; yet, on occasion, the erasure and deletion of data is a better option to guard the dead, their identity, and memory (Harju and Huhtamäki 2024).…”

“…The view of digital afterlife as a socio-technical configuration introduced by Harju and Huhtamäki (2021; see also Harju and Huhtamäki 2024) draws on a multi-method research on the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting. Based on the digital team ethnography of the terror attack (Tikka et al 2023), Harju and Huhtamäki developed a data-centric approach to digital afterlife.…”

“…This explains how the same digital (afterlife) artefact can figure in different techno-affective assemblages where, for example, some affects are oriented toward celebration of death (e.g., rejoicing in terror attack deaths), whereas others are oriented toward celebration of life (solidarity towards victims). Denigration of the dead and commemoration of the dead may thus involve and revolve around the same digital artefact (e.g., the live-streamed video artefact of the Christchurch attack) yet produce different digital afterlives as these are actualised in affectively different assemblages (see Harju and Huhtamäki 2024).…”

“…In discussions of durability/fragility of the digital, the affective social dimension tends to be ignored: it is important to balance the ideas and values of remembering and forgetting and realise that sometimes the disappearance of digital afterlife data can offer relief and reduce harm (Harju and Huhtamäki 2024). It is important to account for the affective potential inherent to data (which remains independent of other factors) also for digital afterlife data that are forgotten, inaccessible, or out of sight-theorising digital afterlife as a techno-affective assemblage helps us to achieve that.…”