Navigating digital remains : the memorialization of deceased persons' social media profiles in Hong Kong

Abstract

Death, Dying and Bereavement remains a topic that seldom finds its discourse in the public or academic realm in Hong Kong. One, however, should err to infer that death and bereavement are treated lightly in Hong Kong. As researchers have established with past studies in Chinese societies, religious ceremonies and funeral services are highly indispensable in death, with rules and conventions concerning bereavement behaviour still being explicitly shared and enforced by society at large. These rules harbour significant implications for how the bereaved should relate to the deceased, to other mourners/other members of society and to the materiality of bereavement; itself a prominent element in the Chinese mourning tradition. However, Hong Kong, as a modernized, post-industrial, developed city, is increasingly manifesting the qualities of a Networked Society, where person to person relationships had superseded the conventional communal-oriented constitution of society. With its associated technological advancements that have since been popularized and universalized, death has made its presence beyond the conventional ceremonial and ritualistic landscape in the form of social media content, where online places are fast becoming prolific sites for mourning and memorialization activities, specifically sites and pages that have survived the demise of their owners. This project aims to study the memorialization process at the network-cultural crossroad. Employing theoretical frameworks from the social network theory, as well as established studies in material culture, rituals and inter-personal Relationship, I hope to demonstrate a new approach to understanding the experiences of respondents who, living under the overt and prevalent cultural conventions with regards to Death, must now contend with the emerging challenges and affordances that digital remains offer in the constituting their personal account in memory of their networked relationships.