Digital Death

Methods and Collaboration Towards a Shared Anthropology

Authors

• Ellen Lapper Independent scholar

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.112431

Abstract

This paper reflexively unpicks digital ethnographic methods employed during ongoing online fieldwork on ‘digital deaths’. To do so, this research delves into the digital afterlife, exploring the fate of online traces and social media profiles after death, and how social media has changed our relationship with death and grieving. Anthropological studies of online death and grief faced new challenges even before COVID-19 moved research projects online. These include shared vulnerabilities and the ethnographer’s position, online field sites, omnipresent online traces and posthumous personhood, and ethical  algorithms and duty to the dead. By transparently detailing my research methods whilst conducting research with Facebook and Instagram users navigating loss, this article contributes an honest and extensive debate on processes, challenges, ethics, and research collaboration. Guided by visual and media anthropology, I advocate for a set of methods rooted in shared anthropology (Rouch 1995) which fosters ongoing dialogue with participants. Thus, this article offers a new perspective on digital death, rooted in collaborative storytelling and reflexive methodologies, facilitating discussions on a still-contentious subject in certain societies. Leveraging the benefits of digital ethnography’s multi-sited nature, the research widens its geographical reach and comments on the sociocultural impacts of digital death.

Keywords: digital afterlife, digital death, digital ethnography, social media, reflexive ethnography, shared anthropology, grief, methodology