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Erin Goff, Ball State University

Death in the Digital World

The ghosts of lost loved ones have 

always haunted us, but the undefined role 

of the dead, the dying, and the grieving in 

the digital world is an ever-growing cultural 

haunting. This paper explores how memo-

ries of the dead are shifted and changed in 

the deceased’s lingering digital presence, 

how grief is altered by the digital world, and 

the uncertainties that arise with no eti-

quette book to guide us through death in 

the digital world. As this new phenomenon 

encroaches on our lives, where does tech-

nological innovation used to remember the 

dead meet an attempt to resurrect them?

Death and grief are everlasting parts of life, 

bringing their own types of haunting within 

different cultures and experiences. As they 

naturally invade our ever-growing digital lives, 

however, these processes morph and change. 

“Anthropological research has long estab-

lished that the dead in many cultural contexts 

have social lives,” which has now emerged into 

a perhaps more puzzling idea that the dead 

have social media accounts (Mitchell et al. 413). 

Considering the social media accounts of the 

deceased, virtual memorials, and the expand-

ing real and imagined technologies to contin-

ue life after death can enhance our interaction 

with these ghosts of death and grief in our 

increasingly digital society. This phenomenon 

that occurs at the intersection between death and the digital world has created a cultural haunt-

ing due to our lack of norms regarding it and the undefined lines in what is considered accept-

able within the dead, the grieving, and the digital. 

The Dead Have Social Media Accounts

         The deceased of today’s world leave ghostly traces of themselves in our minds, in photo 

albums, and in personal belongings, as they always have. As those who die leave behind their 

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, however, they are ever-present in the pulse of the 

Internet. Consider Facebook with “over one billion users, and yet, more than 10,000 of them die 

every day” and they do not just delete themselves (Hiscock). These accounts linger on Facebook 

and the Internet because these technologies do not have the ability to understand the difference 

between when a user has simply not logged in and when they have died. The magnitude of  



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deceased people with Facebook accounts continues to expand by the second: “In fact, 428 [users] 

die every hour, so they’re practically dropping like flies. And every day, these dormant accounts 

receive friend requests, get tagged in photos, and sometimes, they’re even wished a happy birth-

day” (Hiscock). 

 Recognition that these accounts do not simply remain, but are interacted with, reveal their 

deeper reach into our culture from beyond the grave. The remaining posts and automated mes-

sages connected to a dormant account act as interaction on the part of the dead—a haunting 

from the ghost trapped in cyberspace. Naturally, it cannot be expected that new posts will magi-

cally be made from the beyond, but the previous comments, likes, and pictures will eerily remain. 

The old friend from high school that passed away will pop up on your feed as someone who still 

follows a suggested page. The retired teacher who has been dead for months will still appear in 

comments and suggested friends. These traces seem as though they will always remain as this 

relatively new cultural haunting has yet to identify itself as either a friendly or malignant spirit.

 Cyberanthropology expert Michaelanne Dye goes as far as to theorize a possible change 

in identities of the dead: “Today, identities are co-constructed through social media interactions. 

Therefore, the deceased’s online identity not only continues in the virtual space; it can also evolve 

and adapt as others continue to interact with the dead person’s profile” (qtd. in Buck). The idea 

that a person’s online identity continues beyond death suggests that these ghosts are not limited 

to a person’s authentic character. When posts to these accounts become an inaccurate repre-

sentation of the dead, it changes their online identity. Morphing an openly sarcastic and honest 

individual into a saint of compassion after death is more than an interaction with an account—it is 

a rewriting of their digital mark. If these accounts remain, they are forever present and if they be-

come untrue to the person that once owned them, their loved ones can be haunted by the ghost 

of what once was an active online connection. These remnants of a person’s digital presence, 

however, were once created by the living body, whether that is an accurate representation of our 

memory of them or not. We must consider the opposing remaining images of a loved one as their 

online presence, the entity created by digital memory, and the ever-present memory we create 

through our grief. 

In Lieu of Flowers: Virtual Memorials

         The dead are not only present online through traditional user accounts. Virtual memorials 

transform the quiet and private gravestone visit to a public and endless forum for remembrance 

where the living feed into a digital haunted house. It is important to consider the scope of these 



Digital Literature Review 3
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online apparatuses:

 What is a virtual or on-line memorial? They are found on the Internet in a number of forms: 

On social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, in slideshows of the deceased 

set to music and uploaded onto YouTube, and on specialized memorial hosting websites 

created by charities, funeral homes, bereaved individuals, associations connected with spe-

cific illnesses, and notably in profit-based Internet sites which provide web-space at a cost 

to the bereaved individual (Mitchell et al. 415).

The variety in virtual memorial options are differing in scope and intimacy. While some act as 

simply a method of remembering through images, others are designed for interaction between 

grievers. Creating these digital spaces shifts traditional grieving to be considerably more public 

and practically boundless.

 Posts to memorial websites have the potential to reach other people who are hurt by a 

death. This public aspect allows for connection and joint healing. This approach also allows for 

personal trauma to be shared with strangers and future generations. The virtual memorials are 

not limited to a period of time; the painful lamenting of someone in grief enters cyberspace for-

ever, and those in grief are able to dwell in these spaces indefinitely. Just as the dormant account, 

these resources push the dead into a never-ending preoccupation and changing online identity. 

Virtual memorials often contain information both basic and intimate: obituaries, funeral informa-

tion, pictures of the deceased, remaining pieces of their online presence, shared stories by Inter-

net users, and posts of expressed grief. The appropriateness of varying posts in these spaces have 

no societal norms and thus fall on each individual’s judgement. 

 Every citizen in our growing digital world should understand and consider the use of virtual 

memorials. Are they a source of comfort or a new way for our grief to linger and the pain of mem-

ory to haunt us? Not only are we trapped within our own pain but the moaning ghost of wide-

spread grief and the phantom of cheerful memories slip into Facebook feeds and linger in Twitter 

timelines. Our choice in how to grieve may be limited or even removed by the virtual hauntings 

inflicted through new phenomena such as these virtual memorials. Pages that display both the 

pain and positive memory of the dead expand the impact of both their living presences and their 

absences. It can make the single pain of one person—whether they themselves decide to post 

their grief—feel as public and endless as the page for virtual memorial itself.

 Virtual memorials, however, do provide options for handling memories of the dead online 

that better control the haunting of online grieving. Facebook allows accounts of the dead to be 

turned into virtual memorials. These “Memorialized profiles don’t appear in public spaces such 



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as in suggestions for People You May Know, ads or birthday reminders” (Facebook). This removes 

some of the pain of active accounts such as receiving a birthday reminder for someone who no 

longer ages. The intent, and in some cases, the reality, is that memorialized profiles and virtual 

memorials confine the online presence of the dead and grieving to one location like a gravestone. 

People can join and post in these online places as they choose. They also provide the possibility 

of finding comfort in the posts of family and friends that knew the deceased. Virtual memorials 

magnify the visitation of a gravesite. The abilities of these online tools can be used to amplify the 

positives or escalate the difficulties of online grieving, which leaves us to navigate them thought-

fully. One of the gravest dangers of this new digital element of death is that there is no etiquette 

book to guide us as we decipher for ourselves if the lingering online ghosts of our loved ones and 

public forums for grievers are a blessing or a curse. Where is the line between using technology to 

better remember the dead and trying to resurrect them? 

Moonwalking from the Beyond: Recreation of the Famous Dead

 The exceptionally talented and now well-known Vincent van Gogh, Franz Kafka, and Emily 

Dickinson only gained their fame after death. The way we remember famous individuals has al-

ways been focused on their talent and keeping that talent alive. Technology allows us to recreate 

the art of deceased famous people, which has gone to an extent worthy of ethical reflection. We 

have kept celebrities alive through social media hashtags and online song purchasing, but a line 

was perhaps crossed when remembering Michael Jackson and Tupac Shakur. Digital creations 

of these artists (often simply referred to as holograms) were designed to perform at the Billboard 

Music Awards and Coachella, respectively. Technology allows us to see these artists perform from 

beyond the grave as phantoms of their past performances. We have engineered pixelated ghosts 

to continue a legacy or perhaps to further economic gain. The question we must ask is where we 

should draw the line. We have gone from expecting a right to continue the release of music, with 

or without the consent of the dead, to a digital violation of their very bodies. One instance has 

gone as far as Hologram USA suing the late Whitney Houston’s estate after the estate backed out 

of a hologram performance agreement (Toto). This lawsuit implies a sense of entitlement to the 

voice, music, and image of the dead. Digital advances reduce the memory of famous people to a 

shallow copy of the person that disrespects the dead and disarms the living in the pursuit of turn-

ing out money-making holographic ghosts for public viewing.

 We must be aware of the liberties being taken with deceased celebrities through these 

cultural hauntings. We should question if technology is being used to abuse the dead as a contin-



Digital Literature Review 5
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ued source of money or respect the dead in an effort to enhance their memory. These technolog-

ical advances will continue and could easily become a normal occurrence. Digitally created stars 

such as Peter Crushing’s digitally resurrected appearances in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story may 

have us questioning if we could know the difference between a digital recreation and a real hu-

man being (Toto). As these occurrences become more common and more vivid, we may begin to 

question the value of talent and life when it can merely be recreated. Could celebrities never die 

in the eyes of users of film, television, and music? This possibility would leave the family members 

with only superficial digital remains of their loved ones. Could we one day never need living actors 

when we could create actions and images with technology? We need to consider what it means 

to recreate the famous dead and how far we should be willing to go.

The Tech of Frankenstein’s Monster

 As our world is constantly technologically advancing, the shift in how we handle death may 

be too much to bear. The Netflix series Black Mirror explores society and technology in alternative 

and future worlds. The episode titled “Be Right Back” follows the life of a woman, Martha, when 

she turns to a new software to cope with the death of her significant other, Ash. The pain of learn-

ing she is pregnant combined with simple curiosity quickly causes Martha to use software that 

analyzes Ash’s online presence. This software replicates a dead person’s personality in text mes-

sage conversations. A strong essence of who we are is left in our digital mark and this technology 

capitalizes on the lingering traces. Today, or in the near future, computer programmers may very 

well be able to create text responses that sound like the language used in online profiles.

 With these types of technologies, there is a risk of companies abusing grief for profit. In the 

Black Mirror episode, Martha is tempted by the “new Ash” to provide video and audio footage of 

Ash so that the software would have the ability to talk on the phone. Her doing so could result in 

added charges or even a security risk. In her fragile state, Martha, as many of us might, took this 

opportunity instantly, without consideration for cost or risk. Though her spirits begin to rise, we 

are encouraged to ask if her fixation on recreating Ash digitally is psychologically healthy. Martha 

soon spends the vast majority of her time talking to the replication of a dead person—a ghost. She 

begins to ignore her living loved ones, even ignoring a phone call from her sister to speak to the 

digital doppelganger of her boyfriend. This type of technology could very well only delay the griev-

ing process and create further controversy where remembering the dead meets disrespecting 

them.



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The aspect of this episode that truly tests the ethics of technology and the dead is when this “new 

Ash” suggests the third level of this software. “Ash” tells Martha that there is a service that is still in 

the testing phases that she could try, but at a high cost. Martha agrees to the incredibly expensive 

service to give her new computer-based Ash a body. After a blank body is mailed to her home, 

Martha follows the steps to sync the digitally created consciousness of Ash to this new body that is 

also meant to look and sound like her lost love. It can seem easy to judge this character’s choices, 

to dismiss this action as simply too creepy, and to claim that “I could never do this.” The problem 

is that we all have known, or will someday know, the loneliness and pain from losing a loved one. 

It is important to protect people from technologies and companies that might take advantage 

of grieving people. Companies have already set up paid websites to house virtual memories and 

sued estates of the famous to make money off of holograms. We must be aware of evolving in-

novations as they are more haunting than helpful, and judge if software like the creators of Black 

Mirror have imagined have a place in our world.

 For Martha, this defiance of death was not the “re-do button” she had hoped it to be. Slow-

ly, but surely, her interactions with the reincarnate Ash are inconsistent with the man himself. She 

notes that the body looks like Ash “on a good day” due to our tendency to post mainly flattering 

pictures online. He is a man-made ghost of his digital remains. Our digital identities are a part of 

who we are, but they are only a part. Martha’s experience displays how our online selves do not 

know the moles beneath our shirts, the way we make love to our significant others, or the tone in 

which we have our lovers’ quarrels. Simply, our online selves are not enough. When the character 

of Martha finally has a breakdown, she says to this digital imposter of her lover, “You’re just a few 

ripples of you. There’s no history to you. You’re just a performance of stuff that he performed, with-

out thinking, and it’s not enough” (“Be Right Back”). Since human beings feel, love, and hurt in 

human ways, it is natural to wish for our deceased loved ones back often at any cost. Through this 

fictional story, however, we are warned of the repercussions of crossing the unclear lines within 

the overlapping of technology and grief. 

 Social media and the like are shifting the memory of the death and crafting dangerous pat-

terns in grieving that have facilitated an uncertainty and lack of societal norms that feed into this 

new cultural haunting. We have no guidelines to navigate the ghosts on our social media feeds, 

let alone the possibilities of resurrecting the dead as technological advancement continues push-

ing towards boundaries that we have not yet made. It is both the uncertainty and the possibility 

that haunt us. Finally, technologies and online interactions can make grieving easier, but to prop-

erly use these and future technologies we must remember that death is a universal inevitability 



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we all share and those who are lost cannot be recreated in the digital mark they leave behind. 

Otherwise, we risk being haunted by the ghosts we helped create. 



Digital Literature Review 8
 

Works Cited

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Buck, Stephanie. “How 1 Billion People Are Coping With Death and Facebook.” Mashable, 

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