In this section we’ll examine death and its expression and consequences on social media and the Internet, including the recurring theme of communing with the dead through technology.
Monday, February 25 (Week 7)
- Natalie Zarrelli, “Dial-a-Ghost on Thomas Edison’s Least Successful Invention: the Spirit Phone” from Atlas Obscura (2016)
- Mark Fisher, “Approaching the Eerie” from The Weird and the Eerie (2016), pages 61-64
- Blog (Round 3): Group B
Wednesday, February 27
- Jonathan Sterne, “A Resonant Tomb” from The Audible Past (2003), pages 287-311
- Haunted Media Project assigned
- Blog (Round 3): Group C
Friday, March 1
- Bethan Bell, “Taken from Life: Victorian Death Photos” from the BBC (2016)
- Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave” from On Photography (1977), pages 3-24
- Blog (Round 3): Group D
Monday, March 4 – Friday, March 8 (Spring Break)
Monday, March 11 (Week 8)
- Kate Pullinger, “Breathe: A Ghost Story” (2018)
Wednesday, March 13
- Whitney Phillips, LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online from First Monday (2011)
- Megan Garber, Enter the Grief Police from The Atlanta (2016)
- Blog (Round 3): Group E
Friday, March 15
- Jed Brubaker, Gillian Hayes, and Paul Dourish, “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning” from The Information Society (2013), pages 152-163
- Connor Graham et al., “Gravesites and Websites: A Comparison of Memorialisation” from Visual Studies (2015), pages 37-53
- Blog (Round 4): Group A
Monday, March 18 (Week 9)
- Eric Meyer, Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty (2014)
- Gillian Brockell, “Dear Tech Companies, I Don’t Want to See Pregnancy Ads After My Child Was Stillborn” from Washington Post (2018)
- Blog (Round 4): Group B
Wednesday, March 20
- Haunted Media MVP due in class
Friday, March 22
- Rob Walker, Cyberspace when You’re Dead from New York Times (2011)
- Alex Senemar, What Happens to Your Data when You Die? from Medium (2015)
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Carl Öhman and Luciano Floridi, “An Ethical Framework for the Digital Afterlife Industry” from Nature Human Behaviour (2018), pp. 318–320
- Blog (Round 4): Group C
Header: “His Master’s Voice” by Francis Baraud (1899)