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ABSTRACT
The narrative on digital spaces and online experience is one dominated by youth, from the so-called digital natives first heralded by Prensky to digital entrepreneurs and influencers. However, there has recently been a significant growth in the numbers of older people going online. Often forgotten, “digital settlers”, many of them women, went online when the World Wide Web came to life in the 1990s, creating communities and networks of affinity, writing online journals and weblogs. They have stayed ever since, sometimes at the heart of digital spaces, sometimes hidden in the fringes. One of these spaces was home to a community of older women; from 1997 to 2012 we wrote our lives online, in daily conversations and stories. In this autoethnographical paper, through a multivoiced narrative, I explore concepts of death and mourning online and offline, and I celebrate my mentors in ageing. I draw on literary theory to relate these themes to time and space online through the concept of the Bakhtinian chronotope.
Notes on contributor
Cathy Fowley holds a PhD in internet research. Her main research interests are in the fields of life writing, digital literacies, older people and the internet. She currently works on a research project on online learning for older people, and lectures on the Digital Self. She is co-founder and director of Silver Thread Ltd., a social innovation enterprise whose mission is to engage older people in writing stories from their lives, in communities and nursing homes, and to publish these stories.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.