Digital Gravescapes: Digital Memorializing on Facebook

Abstract

I conduct a textual analysis of a digital memorial to understand the ways in which the digital sphere has disrupted or altered material and aesthetic displays of death and the associated genre of discourses surrounding death. I first use Morris's history of traditional gravescapes to situate digital memorials within their broader historical context. I then draw on the functional genre of eulogies, in particular Jamieson and Campbell's systematic description of eulogies, as a textual analytic to understand Facebook's unique memorializing discourse. My analysis suggests that the affordances of the Internet allow for a peculiar dynamic wherein the bereaved engage in communication with the deceased instead of with each other and yet strengthen the communal experience, as their personal communications are visible to the entire community. While the digital memorials lack the permanence of traditional gravescapes, the ongoing conversation they foster sublimates death into the process of communication.

Keywords:

• Facebook
• death
• gravescapes
• eulogy
• discourse
• memorializing
• digital media
• rhetoric

Acknowledgments

© Scott Church

The author wishes to thank Damien Smith Pfister, Joshua P. Ewalt, and Ronald Lee.

Notes

1. Clarissa had been skiing in a treacherous area when an avalanche took her life at age 27. Her name has been changed out of respect for the individual and her friends and family.

2. The Facebook application IfIDie.net, for example, allows users to create messages and have them released to their friends posthumously.

3. The Wall is a section on the user's profile page that is dedicated to receiving posts from friends.

4. The sample I have included here is far from comprehensive; it is, however, intended to sketch in broad strokes the historical context within which digital memorializing can be situated.

5. More information can be found regarding Facebook's memorializing policy on its help center page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082

6. It should be noted that Facebook friends are also able to send private messages to deceased users on memorialized pages. Though these messages may exist, they were not available as a Wall post and thus were not included in this analysis. Similarly, the bereaved Facebook friends could have communicated with each other via private messages; however, these exchanges were absent from the Wall of the memorial and thus were not considered in the analysis.

7. Peters acknowledges that this statement is too stark. However, I believe Peters's near-hyperbole serves a useful purpose because of its very starkness, as it pithily captures essential elements of the changes brought about in the 19th century with the help of communications technologies.