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Dying

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Cyberpsychology as Everyday Digital Experience across the Lifespan

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Abstract

Online memorialising enables continuing bonds with the deceased, the preservation of memories and identities, and opportunities for shared mourning. Using the notion of ‘grief rules’ (social norms about who is entitled to grieve and how grief should be expressed), this chapter examines whether technologically mediated memorialising facilitates ‘healthy grieving’ or provokes ‘complicated grieving’. The chapter examines how online memorialisation changes ‘grief rules’ by making mourning public and visible beyond immediate family and friends, by challenging ideas about what is sacred or profane and by providing opportunities for us to prepare digital legacies beyond physical death. Focusing on subjective experiences of grieving, loss and mourning, this chapter explores both opportunities to receive support in the mourning process and obligations to mourn and memorialise in specific ways.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/troll Accessed November 18, 2017.

  2. 2.

    https://digitalremains.co.uk/ Accessed October 26, 2017.

  3. 3.

    https://www.lifenaut.com/learn-more/ Accessed October 26, 2017.

  4. 4.

    http://eterni.me/ Accessed October 26, 2017.

  5. 5.

    https://www.gonenotgone.com/ Accessed October 26, 2017.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Dave Harley, Julie Morgan & Hannah Frith

Authors
  1. Dave Harley
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  2. Julie Morgan
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  3. Hannah Frith
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Correspondence to Dave Harley .

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Harley, D., Morgan, J., Frith, H. (2018). Dying. In: Cyberpsychology as Everyday Digital Experience across the Lifespan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59200-2_9

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