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Haunting Hands looks closely at the consequences of digital media's ubiquitous presence in our lives, in particular the representing, sharing, and remembering of loss. From Facebook tribute pages during public disasters to the lingering digital traces on a smartphone of the deceased, the digital is both extending earlier memorial practices and creating new ways in which death and loss manifest themselves. The ubiquity of digital specters is particularly evident in mobile media spanning smartphones, iPads, iPhones, or tablets. Mobile media entangle various forms of social, online and digital media in specific ways that are both intimate and public, and yet the use of mobile media in contexts of loss has been relatively overlooked. Haunting Hands seeks to address this growing and important area by helping us to understand the relationship between life, death, and our digital after-lives.
This book investigates how the ubiquitous presence of mobile media reshapes the ways individuals represent, share, and process experiences of death and loss in contemporary society. Authors Kathleen M. Cumiskey and Larissa Hjorth draw upon media theory and sociological observation to examine the intersection of digital technology and human mortality. They argue that mobile devices act as conduits for both public memorialization and private grief, creating a new landscape for digital after-lives that demands critical analysis.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars in the field of media studies identify this work as a significant contribution to the growing discourse on digital death and the sociology of technology. Readers frequently note the academic rigor of the prose and the authors' ability to synthesize complex social theories with everyday digital behaviors.
Page Count:
242
Publication Date:
2017-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190695072
ISBN-13:
9780190695071
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