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Social Sciences
Special Issues
DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife
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DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 December 2023) | Viewed by 9001

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Johanna Sumiala

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Media and Communication Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Interests: digital death; public mourning; social media and death rituals; politics of victimhood; digital immortality and afterlife; AI and death; violent death
Dr. Dorthe Refslund Christensen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
Interests: contemporary Western grief practices; grief and identity work; grief and everyday life; grief and ritualizations; identity and transformation; sharing grief

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Throughout history, death has typically been presented alongside and orchestrated by religion and/or other ideological belief systems and societal institutions (Ariès 1977; Davies 2011). The Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife (DiDe) research consortium builds on the premise that in contemporary digital society, death is largely and increasingly experienced through and managed by affordances of digital communication and the related cultural, social, and institutional practices and conventions (Sumiala 2021; Sisto 2020; Stokes 2021). The present circumstance affects death as a social and cultural phenomenon in multiple ways (Jacobsen 2021). It transforms ideas, beliefs, and conceptions of death in society, alters relationships between the living and the dead, influences the range and character of bereavement practices, reconditions values and morals associated with human death, and reconfigures institutional structures that manage and control death in society (Sumiala 2021; Coeckelbergh 2020; Han 2020).

The DiDe consortium (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/digital-death-transforming-history-rituals-and-afterlife) has committed itself to investigating the topic of digital death by approaching human death as a multifaceted object of accelerated cultural and social transformation in digital society. In DiDe, digital death is defined as a concept that is more than just death and death-related practices perceived, experienced, and performed in a digital context. DiDe specifies digital death as a manifold phenomenon articulated, experienced, and performed in interaction with digital communication and culture. This refers to a dialectical approach in which the digital is seen to shape perceptions and experiences of death in society and culture, but also being shaped by it.

With this Special Issue of Social Sciences, the DiDe group aims to shape a joint foundation for the study of digital death (1) by exploring the interrelations of death and the digital and reflecting on the various formations these interrelations might have for the present day society and (2) by reflecting on the challenges of studying digital death as an interdisciplinary research field. The ambition of this Special Issue is to become an authoritative contribution to the field and to make an essential reading for students and fellow researchers in this rising research area.

The Special Issue will include texts that are theoretical, empirical, and/or reflective. The authors have been invited and picked by the editors.

Publication is planned for 1 January 2024.

Dr. Johanna Sumiala
Dr. Dorthe Refslund Christensen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • digital death
  • grief
  • afterlife
  • immortality
  • beliefs
  • practices
  • history
  • ritual
  • ritualizations
  • transformation
  • interdisciplinarity

Published Papers (6 papers)

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12 pages, 268 KiB  
Article
Theorising Digital Afterlife as Techno-Affective Assemblage: On Relationality, Materiality, and the Affective Potential of Data
by Anu A. Harju
Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(4), 227; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040227 - 21 Apr 2024
Viewed by 531
Abstract
In the ongoing academic discussion regarding what happens to our data after we die, how our data are utilised for commercial profit-making purposes, and what kinds of death-related practices our posthumous data figure in, the notion of digital afterlife is attracting increasing attention. [...] Read more.
In the ongoing academic discussion regarding what happens to our data after we die, how our data are utilised for commercial profit-making purposes, and what kinds of death-related practices our posthumous data figure in, the notion of digital afterlife is attracting increasing attention. While the concept of digital afterlife has been approached in different ways, the main focus remains on the level of individual loss. The emphasis tends to be on the role of posthumous digital artefacts in grief practices and death-related rituals or on data management issues relating to death. Building on a socio-technical view of digital afterlife, this paper offers, as a novel contribution, an understanding of digital afterlife as a techno-affective assemblage. It argues for the necessity of examining technological and social factors as mutually shaping and brings into the discussion of digital afterlife the notions of relationality, materiality, and the affective potential of data. The paper ends with ruminations about digital afterlife as a posthumanist project. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)
17 pages, 294 KiB  
Article
Grief Universalism: A Perennial Problem Pattern Returning in Digital Grief Studies?
by Mórna O’Connor
Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(4), 208; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040208 - 11 Apr 2024
Viewed by 502
Abstract
The year 2024 marks one decade of scholarship in the new interdisciplinary field of Digital Death, concerning the study of death, dying and grief in the digital age. This paper addresses one key subfield of Digital Death Studies, here termed Digital Grief Studies, [...] Read more.
The year 2024 marks one decade of scholarship in the new interdisciplinary field of Digital Death, concerning the study of death, dying and grief in the digital age. This paper addresses one key subfield of Digital Death Studies, here termed Digital Grief Studies, which centres on theory, research and design concerning grief in today’s digitally saturated contexts. It argues that a classic grand pattern in scholarly treatments of grief—Grief Universalism—with a long, problematic history in Grief and Bereavement Studies, is reappearing in Digital Grief Studies. The Continuing Bonds theory of grief and its application in theory, research and design in Digital Grief Studies is used to demonstrate Grief Universalism in action in our field via hypothetical and fictional examples. This builds toward this paper’s big aim: to illustrate what we as an emerging field stand to gain from positioning the established field of Grief and Bereavement Studies as a veritable goldmine of advances—as well as pitfalls, wrong turns, and recurrent problem patterns to be avoided—generated over a hundred years of scholarship concerning human grief. Harnessing this wealth of prior learning and leveraging it toward the furtherance of our field in the coming decade and beyond becomes more crucial as we repel the seemingly perennial magnetism of Grief Universalism, as we operate within an interdisciplinary field vulnerable to Universalism and as yet unaware of its perils, and amid contemporary digital cultures and environments that may preserve and reinforce universalist grief framings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)
11 pages, 258 KiB  
Article
Digital Death and Spectacular Death
by Johanna Sumiala and Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(2), 101; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020101 - 06 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1248
Abstract
Throughout human history, individuals, communities and societies have always had to confront and tackle the problem of death. Consequently, death remains a topic of social scientific relevance, highlighting the need for its study and for theorising around it. This article analyses the development [...] Read more.
Throughout human history, individuals, communities and societies have always had to confront and tackle the problem of death. Consequently, death remains a topic of social scientific relevance, highlighting the need for its study and for theorising around it. This article analyses the development of the social scientific study of death and dying, taking inspiration from Philippe Ariès’s historical stages to discuss the recent developments in the field, namely the study of digital death. The article begins with a discussion of the visibility of death in modern society in the context of spectacular death. The analysis emphasises its four dimensions: mediatisation, commercialisation, re-ritualisation and the revolution in end-of-life care. The article moves on to discuss the emergence of digital death as the current stage and reflects on its similarities to spectacular death and its transformation of public imaginaries around death in contemporary society. The article concludes with a reflection on future developments in the field, specifically the emergence and study of artificial intelligence (AI) in digitalised death culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)
10 pages, 245 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Immortological Imagination: Advocating for a Sociology of Immortality
by Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska and Paula Kiel
Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(2), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020083 - 29 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1419
Abstract
The digital age has rekindled popular and academic interest in immortality. While the idea of immortality has long been recognized as fundamental to human societies, unlike death, within the field of sociology, immortality has not yet established itself as a distinct and autonomous [...] Read more.
The digital age has rekindled popular and academic interest in immortality. While the idea of immortality has long been recognized as fundamental to human societies, unlike death, within the field of sociology, immortality has not yet established itself as a distinct and autonomous field of study. This paper contributes to the recently emerging scholarship promoting a sociology of immortality. Drawing inspiration from C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination (1959) and building upon significant research in the field of immortality, we offer to use the concept of the immortological imagination as an analytical and conceptual tool for further developing a sociology of immortality. We refer to the immortological imagination as a complementary concept to Penfold-Mounce’s thanatological imagination, seeing both concepts as stemming from two different lineages and academic traditions. After defining the immortological imagination and how it differs from and complements the thanatological imagination, the paper moves to discuss examples in popular culture establishing the potential impacts and influences of the immortological imagination, particularly within the digital context. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)
11 pages, 271 KiB  
Article
Digital Séance: Fabricated Encounters with the Dead
by Doron Altaratz and Tal Morse
Soc. Sci. 2023, 12(11), 635; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12110635 - 16 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1502
Abstract
Digital afterlife is becoming increasingly possible due to advancements in VR, deepfake, and AI technologies. The use of computational photography for mourning and commemoration has been re-integrated into practices of remembrance, farewell, continuity, and disengagement. Two case studies, the Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in [...] Read more.
Digital afterlife is becoming increasingly possible due to advancements in VR, deepfake, and AI technologies. The use of computational photography for mourning and commemoration has been re-integrated into practices of remembrance, farewell, continuity, and disengagement. Two case studies, the Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony and the TV production Meeting You, are analyzed to explore these new possibilities. We show how photography’s new affordances enable interaction while maintaining its essence as a representation of reality and argue that this socio-technological transformation habituates contemporary practices of mourning and commemoration, adjusting images to serve the individual needs and interests of the bereaved and the community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)

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20 pages, 4776 KiB  
Essay
Socio-Phenomenological Reflections on What Digital Death Brings and Denies in Terms of Relational Experiences to Orthodox Romanians
by Adela Toplean
Soc. Sci. 2023, 12(12), 686; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120686 - 13 Dec 2023
Viewed by 2394
Abstract
Informed by Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology of social relations and its recent developments addressing online relationality, this essay reflects on the differences between online and offline death-related experiences in contemporary Romania. In Orthodox death cultures, religious, social, and familial bonds overlap. Orthodox Christianity is [...] Read more.
Informed by Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology of social relations and its recent developments addressing online relationality, this essay reflects on the differences between online and offline death-related experiences in contemporary Romania. In Orthodox death cultures, religious, social, and familial bonds overlap. Orthodox Christianity is sceptical about body–mind separation and values unmediated liturgical communities. It is, thus, pertinent to ask what death online brings and denies in terms of experience to Romanian internet users. Some preliminary findings from our fieldwork are discussed. So far, on Romanian Facebook, three clusters of experience emerged widely: 1. A realm of belief where faith, unchallenged by digital practices, “decodes” deadly events across life-worlds; 2. Experiences of resistance and ambivalence of those who are stuck “in-between“, that is, those less competent in their traditions, yet sceptical about digital change; 3. Death experiences seem less synchronised across life-worlds for those who value electronic proximity: digital death and real death obey different rules. Historical specificity, we shall conclude, sets typified combinations of motives for what Romanians do in the proximity of death and how they do it. Digital technologies modulate the “hows” and, less notably, the “whats”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue DIDE–Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife)
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