Digital Graveyards

The two key existential facts about modern media are these: the ease with which the living may mingle with the communicable traces of the dead, and the difficulty of distinguishing communication at a distance from communication with the dead.

This chapter analyzes the widespread practice of using social network sites such as Facebook to send communication to deceased users, both immediately following the user’s death and in the longer term.

Brubaker and Hayes note that direct messages usually are directed to the deceased, not, as one might expect, to co-mourners.19