Digital eternities - Post-mortem digital identities and memorial uses of the web

The persistence of digital data, after the death of users, raises a number of questions today. What happens to users' identity data after their death? Do they care about it during their lifetime? How are they managed by their loved ones? How do web players such as Google and Facebook deal with it? Given the gendered dimension of digital and death-related practices, we want to question how gender structures these phenomena. How does the gender of the deceased and of those who pay tribute to them play a part in memorial practices and the construction of post-mortem identities? The proliferation of digital applications dedicated to memorialization and the massive use of socionumeric networks (SNNs) - correlated with the aging of the web-using population - suggest that these questions will take on increasing importance in the coming years.



While the societal issues raised by the persistence of profiles of deceased users, as well as changes in mourning practices on the Internet and memorial uses of the web, have attracted the attention of international research over the past few years - the question of gender being little explored nonetheless - little work is currently being done on this subject in France. What's more, while a number of studies have looked at the intersection of digital practices and death, or at the gendered dimension of mourning, none have articulated the issues of digital practices, death and gender.



The study of death sheds light on social structures and embraces questions of identity as well as the history of bodies and self-representations. This research therefore proposes to analyze the memorial uses of the web and the construction of post-mortem digital identities through the prism of gender, and to draw out the social, economic, legal and symbolic issues at stake.