[Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 101, Issue 25

Cassian Vian cassian at hotmail.co.uk
Mon Dec 31 05:51:22 PST 2012


That's an interesting example Annika. I thought I'd chip in my own anecdote as I've never formally looked into the subject but would like to read some work on it.

A cousin of mine plays World of Warcraft and has made a few friends through it - some of whom he has met offline. A couple of years ago he logged on to find that a woman he had known for three years had died in a car crash. Her husband was one of the people he had met in person and he had spoken to her over voice chat. My cousin was pretty upset as you can imagine. His feelings became more confused when it transpired through a series of emails that the dead woman he was mourning never existed! The man claiming to be her husband had invented her. Going as far as to modify his voice over software whilst pretending to be his fictional wife. It's possible there are still people online who think of her as a real person who died. I found the blurring of the lines between fiction and reality, even with a subject (death) which is supposedly the ultimate in real fascinating. I'm not sure my cousin shared my academic interest though.

Cassian

-----Original Message-----

From: annika coughlin
Sent: 30 Dec 2012 22:04:49 GMT
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 101, Issue 25

Hi CT

I don't have any literature recommendations, but I think it is an interesting topic. I have always wondered if any one has researched how online community members, who only know each other online, deal with the death of an online community member who they never met in the flesh. My father was an online poet from the UK, but quite popular in Australia and when we had to tell people of his death, it was quite interesting contacting the various message boards he was a member of. Also - he used to play the Wii and have a Wii character as well as a character in Animal Crossing. When we play the Wii now, his character is still on there and it is funny when he appears in games as his Wii character. In Animal Crossing, we built a memorial in the game with flowers etc near his house.

It would be interesting if someone has researched anything to do with this sort of thing.

Annika




>Message: 2
>Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2012 11:35:20 +0200
>From: Cagla Taskin <ctasquin at yahoo.com>
>To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>Subject: [Air-L] Literature on online grieving and bereavement
>Message-ID: <E7681324-1D51-4053-97A8-3C1966AD2B6F at yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain;    charset=us-ascii
>
>Dear list members,
>
>I am currently writing my Master's thesis on practices of grieving and bereavement online, with a focus on a suicide survivors forum case study. Any literature recommendations would be highly appreciated.
>
>Thank you in advance,
>CT
>
>
>
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