Digital Afterlife

Death Matters in a Digital Age

Maggi Savin-Baden, Victoria Mason-Robbie, Maggi Savin-Baden, Victoria Mason-Robbie

• Publisher: Chapman and Hall/CRC
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000026627
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Computer Science

Despite the range of studies into grief and mourning in relation to the digital, research to date largely focuses on the cultural practices and meanings that are played out in and through digital environments. Digital Afterlife brings together experts from diverse fields who share an interest in Digital Afterlife and the wide-ranging issues that relate to this. The book covers a variety of matters that have been neglected in other research texts, for example:

• The legal, ethical, and philosophical conundrums of Digital Afterlife

• The ways digital media are currently being used to expand the possibilities of commemorating the dead and managing the grief of those left behind

Our lives are shaped by and shape the creation of our Digital Afterlife as the digital has become a taken for granted aspect of human experience. This book will be of interest to undergraduates from computing, theology, business studies, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and education from all types of institutions. Secondary audiences include researchers and postgraduate researchers with an interest in the digital.

At a practical level, the cost of data storage and changing data storage systems mitigate the likelihood of our digital presence existing in perpetuity. Whether we create accidental or intentional digital memories, this has psychological consequences for ourselves and for society. Essentially, the foreverness of forever is in question.

Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Higher Education Research at the University of Worcester. She has a strong publication record of over 50 research publications and 17 books.

Victoria Mason-Robbie is a Chartered Psychologist and an experienced lecturer having worked in the Higher Education sector for over 15 years. Her current research focuses on evaluating web-based avatars, pedagogical agents, and virtual humans.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editors
• Contributors
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 ▪ Perspectives on Digital Afterlife
• CHAPTER 2 ▪ Social Media and Digital Afterlife
• CHAPTER 3 ▪ Posthumous Digital Material: 
Does It ‘Live On’ in Survivors’ 
Accounts of Their Dead?
• CHAPTER 4 ▪ The Transition from Life to the Digital 
Afterlife: Thanatechnology and Its Impact 
on Grief
• CHAPTER 5 ▪ Profit and Loss: The Mortality 
of the Digital Immortality Platforms
• CHAPTER 6 ▪ The ‘New(ish)’ Property, Informational 
Bodies, and Postmortality
• CHAPTER 7 ▪ Digital Remains: The Users’ Perspectives
• CHAPTER 8 ▪ Legal Issues in Digital Afterlife
• CHAPTER 9 ▪ Building a Digital Immortal
• CHAPTER 10 ▪ Philosophical Investigations 
into Digital Afterlife
• CHAPTER 11 ▪ Postdigital Afterlife: A Philosophical Framework
• CHAPTER 12 ▪ Digital Afterlife Matters
• GLOSSARY
• INDEX