[Air-L] web sites after death

[Mariana Matos]

Hi Anne and all,

I agree with you that there are many generations in the web, and I think 
that it's something that must be considered. I also believe that the age 
explains the different experiences that you and Anna described.

>From what I've been observing, I must say that people behave completely 
different in Orkut according to the deceased person's age. I've witnessed 
profiles of people who were around 40 or more when they died. Although their 
death was sudden, the commotion was fully different from the one that 
usuallyt happens with younger ones. The profile of the older still received 
messages for a while, but then people stopped writing. There are one or 
another who keep writing, but they're few. When the profile's owner was 
young, even after 3 or more years since the death, people keep writing 
often, and always in such an emotional way.

Best
Mariana



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anne Holappa" <aholapp2 at welho.com>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 3:05 PM
Subject: [Air-L] web sites after death


Hi Anna & Marianna etc.

I agree network gives possibilities for showing the sorrow in a new
way. But I have to point out that there still are kind of several
generations acting in the web. Death that happened personally close to
me left there for example a facebook profile of the deceased that
wasn´t to be formulated to any memorial website or virtual graveyard.
It was lacking almost all that even though the deceased was very well
known and had several contacts etc. I wrote privately to Marianna
about it. I don´t know if it´s due to age of the persons near the
deceased or is it due to sorrowing habits we have here in Finland and
the stereotype of not showing deep feelings in public. I don´t know,
but like I said to Marianna, this is very interesting research area.

Anne Holappa,
cultural anthropologist,
Finland



Lainaus Anna Haverinen <aehaverinen at gmail.com>:

> Hi Mariana and everybody,
> I'm a recently graduated student of anthropology from Finland and I have
> witnessed the same phenomena here too. It seems to be a natural response 
> for
> the people left behind since a blog or a webpage or a profile seems to 
> have
> this sense of personality, e.g. the personality of the deceased. In the 
> same
> way people leave candles and memorial artefacts to locations where a 
> person
> had died or used to live. People seem to think that we leave a hint of
> ourselves in places, also in virtual space. This phenomena includes 
> official
> memorial websites and virtual graveyards (which I'm studying currently for
> my doctorate thesis) that have been flourishing since 1995. I did my
> master's thesis about virtual memorial sites, their public/private aspects
> and conceptualizing virtual space experience. Death rituals (mourning,
> bereavement and honoring the deceased) are changing with Internet and 
> social
> networking, and they seem to give a new way of coping with loss and 
> sorrow.
>
> Unfortunately my work is still in progress and my master's thesis is still
> only in Finnish (will get it translated soon), but hopefully this remark 
> has
> been helpful to you.
>
> Best,
> Anna Haverinen
>
> 2009/7/3 Nishant Shah <itsnishant at gmail.com>
>
>> Hi Mariana,
>> Thanks for the introduction to your work. It sounds quite fascinating and
>> indeed has seen some parallels in India. Especially with a couple of
>> high-profile cases which found a lot of publicity in the mainstream 
>> media,
>> and were dubbed facetiously as 'Orkut Deaths', we saw a similar 
>> phenomenon
>> in India. In both the cases, the two young people who died, left active
>> profiles which were at the centre of a great public debate and resulted 
>> in
>> thousands upon thousands of people coming to see, to comment and to leave
>> testimonials and messages of grief, condolence, and anger at the tragic
>> turn
>> of events. I had written a small Op-ed for a national daily that gives 
>> some
>> of this information which you can research further (
>> http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/09/02/stories/2007090250010100.htm ). I 
>> also
>> have a chapter in my PhD thesis that deals with these two cases and gives
>> more details about the same. Please let me know if you would like to have 
>> a
>> look at them and I will email it to you in person.
>>
>> One of the more important thing about these live profiles of people who 
>> had
>> passed away, was also the appearance of clones. There were suddenly many
>> people who were creating 'false' accounts, appropriating the persona of 
>> the
>> dead, and also receiving a lot of comments and scraps.I found this
>> particularly interesting because these accounts were accurate in the
>> information about the dead persons and also appropriated their pictures,
>> creating elaborate false networks and photo albums to create a certain
>> notion of authenticity.
>>
>> Hope this information is helpful to you,
>>
>> Warmly
>> Nishant
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Mariana Matos <
>> marianasantiagodematos at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Hello there!
>> >
>> > I've been on the list for almost 2 months, but, until now, I've just 
>> > read
>> > what people were writing. And I must say there are many interesting
>> topics
>> > being discussed! However, I'd like to introduce myself and share with 
>> > you
>> > all information about my research subject.
>> >
>> > I'm a psychologist from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a PhD student at 
>> > PUC-Rio
>> > (the Catholic University). I'm part of a group of researchers who have
>> been
>> > studying the psychological and social impacts of the use of technology
>> such
>> > as the Internet, cell phones, games, and some others. The group is 
>> > leaded
>> by
>> > Professor Ana Maria Nicolaci-da-Costa, who's been researching on this
>> > subject since the very beggining of the use of Internet in Brazil.
>> >
>> > My research in on the habit of writing scraps, on Orkut (the most 
>> > popular
>> > social network site in Brazil), to people who died and left their
>> profiles
>> > active. As you should know, if someone dies, the profile may still be
>> > active, what happens if no one deletes it or asks the site to delete 
>> > it.
>> > I've been observing that a substantial number of dead people's profile
>> > receive a great amount of messages, writen often by close friends and
>> > family. In these messages, they "talk" about their feelings, tell the
>> dead
>> > about their quotidian (i.e. what they did in the weekend), talk about
>> their
>> > memories etc.
>> >
>> > I have the impression that this is a brazilian phenomenon, and I'd like
>> to
>> > ask you if you see something similar in your countries, even if people
>> use
>> > other SNS, like Facebook or any other. Do you know people who died and
>> let
>> > their profiles? Do you know if they still receive messages, even if 
>> > more
>> > than one year have passed since the death?
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> > Mariana Matos-Silva
>> > PhD Student
>> > PUC-Rio
>> > Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nishant Shah
>> Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore.
>> Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( 
>> www.cis-india.org )
>> Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09
>> # 00-86-21-66130376
>> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Anne Holappa
anne.holappa at welho.com

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