%0 Journal Article %J The Information Society: An International Journal %D 2013 %T Digital Gravescapes: Digital Memorializing on Facebook %A Scott Church %K Contemporary Religious Community %K cyberspace %K Death %K digital media %K digital memorials %K discourse %K eulogy %K Facebook %K gravescapes %K memorializing %K memorializing discourse %K New Media and Society %K new media engagement %K New Technology and Society %K online communication %K Online community %K religion %K Religion and the Internet %K religious engagement %K rhetoric %K social media %K Sociology of religion %K virtual community %K virtual public sphere %K “religion online” %X I conduct a textual analysis of a digital memorial to understand the ways in which the digital sphere has disrupted or altered material and aesthetic displays of death and the associated genre of discourses surrounding death. I first use Morris's history of traditional gravescapes to situate digital memorials within their broader historical context. I then draw on the functional genre of eulogies, in particular Jamieson and Campbell's systematic description of eulogies, as a textual analytic to understand Facebook's unique memorializing discourse. My analysis suggests that the affordances of the Internet allow for a peculiar dynamic wherein the bereaved engage in communication with the deceased instead of with each other and yet strengthen the communal experience, as their personal communications are visible to the entire community. While the digital memorials lack the permanence of traditional gravescapes, the ongoing conversation they foster sublimates death into the process of communication. %B The Information Society: An International Journal %V 29 %G eng %U http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01972243.2013.777309#.UikZdDasim7 %N 3 %& 184 %0 Book %B Rhetoric and public affairs series. %D 2003 %T Christianity and the mass media in America : toward a democratic accommodation %A Quentin J Schultze %K America %K Christian media %K communication research %K media %K media criticism %K religion %K religious life %K Religious sociology %K rhetoric %X Demonstrates how religion and the media in America have borrowed each other's rhetoric. In the process, they have also helped to keep each other honest, pointing out respective foibles and pretensions. Christian media have offered the public as well as religious tribes some of the best media criticism - better than most of the media criticism produced by mainstream media themselves. Meanwhile, mainstream media have rightly taken particular churches to task for misdeeds as well as offered some surprisingly good depictions of religious life %B Rhetoric and public affairs series. %I East Lansing, Mich. : Michigan State University Press %G eng %U http://www.worldcat.org/title/christianity-and-the-mass-media-in-america-toward-a-democratic-accommodation/oclc/53045150/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true