[Air-l] facebook

[Lauren Squires]

I don't recall whether a discussion regarding eulogizing on social 
networking sites was ever sparked by this, but it's happening also here now, 
again with the Facebook profile of an undergraduate found dead last week. 
Short article here: 
http://www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/home/headlines/1999437.html

Really interesting how it is a space for sentimentality but also a resource 
for finding out more about a person you didn't know well, or getting a 
better idea of who that you know might be personally affected by the 
tragedy, as Jiliana's student points out.

On a design note, it's interesting that sites like Facebook and Myspace 
enable this kind of discourse by providing "comments" or "wall posts" that 
don't have to be approved or moderated by the user whose profile it is - 
whereas this wouldn't be possible on Friendster because users have to 
approve testimonials before they appear.

Lauren

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:12:36 +0100
  Jillana <jillana at jillana.net> wrote:
> I just received this from a student about the facebook at Northwestern 
> University:
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> speaking of electronic forms of communication... I'm not sure if you 
>> heard about it at all, but last weekend an RA in one of the 
>> residential halls up north killed himself. I didn't know him, but I 
>> found it really interesting how people responded to his death in the 
>> online world. People were using his facebook profile as a site for 
>> eulogizing him. The sentiments seemed sincere, but to me it seemed 
>> trite. I wasn't sure how you felt about.  A friend of mine who knew 
>> him because she was an RA also made an interesting comment. She 
>> mentioned to me over lunch that she and her other RA friends had 
>> decided he was officially dead when he got signed off of AIM. I don't 
>> mean to bring so dire a piece of news, but I wasn't sure how to react. 
>> The FB brought me closer to him, and showed me explicitly who our 
>> mutual friends were, but I never knew him. I'm not too affected by it 
>> now, and I meant to email you about it earlier (they've since taken 
>> his profile off of FB).
>>
>>
>> Thought it was an interesting use of online space, have you 
>> encountered anything like that in your research?
>>
> 
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----
Lauren Squires
Linguistics Program
University of Virginia
***
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