ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the significance of digital media in contemporary bereavement practices, activities that traditionally have involved much attention to the management and expression of emotion. It examines a range of practices including funerals in online communities, news-sharing, cybermemorials and the use of social network sites to investigate some of the ways in which emotional repertoires' are being preserved and transformed as digital media take on increasingly central roles in our daily lives. Death threatens the community with dissolution, ending the participation of a group member and terminating relationships. Religious communities do have some power to shape the technologies they use, but that power is limited by institutional systems of media production and distribution, and by the expectations of audiences. Media have also been absorbed into practices of bereavement and mourning, functioning alongside organised events and informal face-to-face interactions.