New Technologies, New Rituals: Virtual Cemeteries

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to establish exploratory lines for inquiring into the way in which “new information and communication technologies” (ICTs), specifically those related to the use of the Internet, influence the installation of new “ritualized” practices surrounding the event of death.

The starting point is the observation of the emergence of “profiles” on social networks, particularly Facebook, used to express grief over the death of a person or different expressions of affection and wishes for recovery in the face of an imminent tragic outcome, such as terminal illness or coma. These expressions are made by friends, relatives, or even strangers who feel the need to express their feelings in response to such events.

Much of the current reflection on funerary rituals has led to the idea of the gradual loss of certain practices, such as attending wakes or burials and visiting cemeteries. This would be related to the place that the event of death currently occupies in our society, where it has become increasingly invisibilized through the loss of certain rituals, unlike other periods in which “mourning” was seen as essential for the elaboration of grief.

However, the appearance of the memorial profiles to which we have referred would seem to contradict this idea, at least in some sectors of society.

Some of the questions that guide us are: Do these profiles constitute a new way of remembering the dead? What do they preserve from previous modalities, and in what ways do they change? Do they seek the individual expression of grief, or do they aim to make suffering visible and share it with others?

The methodological proposal consists in analyzing the meaning of the farewell ritual to the dead on Facebook, applying semiotic methodology to a set of “texts” such as Facebook memorial profiles and interviews with users, as well as obituaries in print media. The aim is to establish the different enunciative modalities present in each case and the ways in which they account for social perceptions and modes of saying farewell to the dead.