1. Death on Facebook
Mourning and memory as a prosumer
activity for Social Media Users"
Piergiorgio Degli Esposti"
Sociology and Business Law!
Università di Bologna!
!

2. Digital mediated grief"
• representation of death
• changes in mourning reactions
• cemetery as segregation of death
• death 2.0 the right to remember, the will to forget?

3. After death web serivces"
• data & blog maintanence!
• email delivered after death!
• obituaries &memorial!
• wills!

4. The daily death"

5. Death & Sociology"
• E. Durkeim - funeral is a cerimony assembly that served the
pourpose of reaffirming the solidarity of the group.!
• T. Parsons - active orientation contemporary society, deviant
orientation fatalistic society.!
• P. Berger's - death is an essential feature of the human condition
that requires people to develop means of coping with it.!
• W. Fuchs - natural death separation between traditional (arcaic)
and modern world - magic and religious projections vs
disenchantment.!
• J. Baudrillard - death as the domain of nature up on culture,
generates a mutual exchange between living society and dead -
symbolic exchange!

6. Private & Public Sphere"
• If We live in Public
We also die in Public
! Death move from private to public
trough media
• most mediated society ever
experienced
• digital archives and digital footprints
• celebrity death

7. Hyperexchange"
• separation (ghettoize) between live and dead!
• social media seems to create new symbolic
exchange with the dead!

8. Memory weinees"
Structure that leads behaviors"
• Centraly percieved !
• Centally controlled!
• Hi tech controlled!
• Empty of distinctive content!
!
!
Nothing Something Continuum"
!
How long may last the mutual exchange?!
May we speculate a zombification ofFB?!
!

9. Disenchantment and Re-enchantement"
Reflexivity modernity"
• Romantic ethic
• Removal of magical • New Age and
(Weber)!
Postmodern
• Calculability and • common nomenclature
Burocratization!
• common origins the 60 s
• Social and economical • Rejections of enlightenment
control upon death!
project
• Rationalization of time - (Campbell)
Risk society (Beck)!
• End of death taboo

10. Mourning as a prosumer activity"
DEATH INDUSTRY" VS! DIY MEMORIALS"
the 'death industry' has primarily
had a split between those who social media has made the
produced (the gravestones, consumers also the producers
caskets, and so on) and those who of the mourning and
consumed (us).! memorializing process.!

11. Facebook policy"
• Facebook used to immediately delete the
accounts of the deceased!
• 2005 introduced memorialize profile
(post and interest removed profile viewable
only to friends)!
• 2007 After Virginia Tech shootings, the site
changed its policy in response to the deluge
of comments left on the victims' profile
pages!
• The "memorialization" process wasn t
officially announced since 2008 - before was
an automatized process!
• Relatives or friends has to fill a declaration
form to annoumce a death !

12. Facebook generational gap"
May SNS risk to become digital graveyard or Dinosaurs of consumption?"

13. Possible models for interpretation"
Celebrity"
no personal knowledge!
no profile!
!
Phantoms" Martyr "
significant other withTesto
(heros or victims)"
memorialized profile ! no personal knowledge!
! possible profile!
!
Zombie"
significant other with !
profile still active!
!
!

14. Possible models of interpretation"
segregation" sociality" enchantement" prosumption"
video!
quotes!
CELEBRITY" no! photo! limited! medium!
groups!
video!
quotes!
MARTYR" partial! photo! limited! medium!
groups!
video!
quotes!
PHANTOM" partial! photo! medium! medium!
groups!
video!
quotes!
ZOMBIE" no! photo! high! high!
groups!
apps!

15. Conclusions"
• Prosumer activity turn something out of
nothing
• There will still be the opportunity to deviate
from centralized rules?
• Exist an hyper symbolic exchange?
• Will FB make obsolete graveyards (as the
web did with the press, DVD and so on)?
• Could a closed and controlled system
generate re-enchantemet?

16. Thank You!"
www.pgde.eu!
piergiorgio.degliesposti@unibo.it!
twitter.com/pgde!