Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age

Likewise, unlike a cemetery, a virtual memorial is accessible via online connectivity at all hours of the day and night.

difference? Aside from sensory details, can placing a digital rose on a virtual memorial truly be said to be different than placing a real one on a gravesite when both are symbolic gestures?

The form and content of posting messages to deceased users on social network sites seem to suggest three beliefs about afterlife: (1) that the deceased can receive electronic communication, (2) that the deceased is in heaven, and (3) that the living user someday will be reunited with the dead.

was, in fact, there, participating, or watching. As many friends comment, ‘Wish you were here, but I know you’re in heaven watching’”

.]. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions [. . .]. As time passes, the sting of losing someone you care about also fades but it never goes away. I still visit my [deceased] friend’s memorialized profile to remember the good times we had and share them with our

A deceased person’s profile therefore offers visitors a venue for “continued conversation” with the deceased as they “integrat[e] their mourning practices directly into their ongoing social relationships.”

A Facebook profile can function as a space for mourning, which is broadly defined as any outward expression of grief.5 It can also become a memorial object created, whether purposefully or accidentally, as an act of memory preservation.

but I prefer the term nondigital to real because digital and virtual objects are real, in that they exist in physical space, and engaging with them is a material experience.

“If the dead are virtually memorialized, they never really die. The more in-depth the memorial and the greater its permanence, the more the deceased remain with the living.”36