How to notify of a death in this digital era - part 2

Receiving news regarding death is never easy, but is there a difference if you are notified by a phone call, through a newspaper obituary, text message, tweet or Facebook news feed update, than receiving an invitation to a funeral in a Facebook event?

Is there a need for new social conventions about what is acceptable or polite in the digital era, and what isn't?

Social conventions have already changed somewhat: in the past, it was customary to call when you wanted to say "Happy Birthday" or "Happy New Year". Today, more people prefer to text, and many post on friends’ Facebook pages. It’s also acceptable to get birthday party invitations - or even news of engagement and marriage - online.

Updating the relationship status in Facebook

It's interesting to note that what is acceptable in Israel regarding birthdays and engagements isn’t (yet?) acceptable, as far as weddings are concerned: it is still customary here to send printed wedding invitations by mail, and often to deliver them by hand. Elsewhere, electronic wedding invitations are common, and RSVPing is done online. (Amit Bar-Tzion, CEO and Founder of easywed, confirms that it's not only my personal impression: "There are some online invitations in Israel, but only a few. Print rules the day").

Will the social conventions in Israel change, and in the future will we accept online wedding invitations as a matter of routine? 

Wedding attendance - online RSVP

In Israel, we have grown to accept electronic invitations to a memorial service, to a "Shivah" (a Jewish tradition: marking the first seven days of mourning) or to a "Shloshim" (marking the first 30 days of mourning). What about electronic notices regarding death or a funeral? Are these in the same range of Israeli social conventions as weddings? What will make an online wedding invitation - or a funeral invitation - personal enough for us to feel comfortable sending and receiving them?

 

Are norms of "acceptable" or "polite" online affected by the social conventions in that geographical region? In Israel, religious Jewish funerals are held as soon as possible after death, sometimes as early as the same day. Elsewhere, a few days can pass from the moment of death to the funeral or service. 


In Israel, compared to abroad, there is a need to let as many people know as possible, as fast as possible, so social networks, emails etc. should have been accepted here as a legitimate way, because they answer those needs. Is there more inclination - and more time - abroad, to prepare personalized, designed invitations to a funeral or a service, which isn't available here? Will this turn the Israelis into people who more readily accept notices of bad tidings through digital formats?

A cousin of a friend of mine passed away unexpectedly. Her mother wrote on her daughter’s Facebook timeline a message: "She is no longer with us", along with the date and time of her funeral. Another cousin of his saw it and wrote to my friend: "I saw something strange posted on our cousin's Facebook page. Is this a joke?". My friend had to tell him that, sadly enough, it wasn’t.

My friend C. recently found out twice through Facebook about deaths: the first time was when the husband of her dear friend S., who passed away after a long term of illness, wrote on S.'s profile - and through her user, not through his - that she passed away, along with the details regarding the funeral. The second time was when three mutual friends of C. and her friend A. wrote in Facebook that they couldn't believe A. was gone - and she didn't know neither that he passed away nor under which circumstances it happened.

I'm guessing no one would like to find out like this: 

Will writing on Facebook replace coming in person to a memorial service, as writing in Facebook replaces making a phone call on a birthday? Will social networks replace the way we mark sad occasions, in the same way they changed the way we mark happy ones? Or will funerals and memorial services, like weddings, remain in the area in which we feel more comfortable in the physical sphere, rather than in the virtual one?

Will the next stage be that funerals be broadcast live on the Internet? Will it make us feel closer, as those who can't attend in person will at least be able to watch? Or will it make us feel farther apart, because less people will attend the funeral in person, and prefer watching it from afar? Will a social norm - under which it is legitimate to tweet your condolences -create a society in which more people will pay their virtual respects, and less people will be there to comfort grievers in person?  

Mourning on Twitter - from Life Insurance Finder's infographics. 

Andriana Cassimatis' mother passed away in 2007. In an interview to Digital Dust, she wrote: 

I had so many other things to organize before the funeral, that calling each and every guest to tell them all of the details such as time, place and directions seemed a daunting task. Of course I phoned close family and friends to notify them of the actual death, but then I followed that brief phone call up with an email that contained a link to a custom website I had made for her, which contained all of the practical details. It worked very well. I was free to focus on other things and all of the guests found their way to the event. 

Andriana had four days between the time her mother passed away and the time the ceremony was held - time enough to create and upload this mini site. She also used this site as a way to communicate with the guests, asking them, for example, instead of bringing or sending flower arrangements, to make a donation to a specific breast cancer foundation. (this solution worked perfectly for her, but it doesn't mean someone else might not feel differently: that a website is too cold or too estranged of a solution, and would prefer to make these phone calls in person, or maintain direct interactions with the other grievers).   

Andriana: 

In the past three - four years, funeral homes have started to promote the practical details of funeral events on their websites. There are also a handful of memorial sites which are beginning to offer this information as well. The problem for me is that none of these sites seems sincere or personal in any way. The overall visuals and content have never been updated to reflect our design conscious generation or include different cultures. 

Here is an example of an online invitation a funeral home posted when her aunt passed away:

As you can see, it's attached to the funeral home's main site and it has all the practical details - it's just void of any personality or representation of that person. 

Andriana feels... 

"There will never be a more appropriate event when using technology is of great benefit - usually due to tight time constraints concerning burial or cremation traditions. Technology allows us to notify a lot of people all at once. But by the very personal nature of death itself, people are still struggling with what is acceptable etiquette. That is why finding a good bridge between these two - technology and sincerity - is the key. Yes, people are much more likely to send online invitations to happy occasions such as weddings and birthdays and that is where we see the most creativity happening. Death in terms of creativity has stayed nearly stagnant".  

Following her personal experience, when she felt technology and the net failed to serve her in her hour of need. Andriana created a website which went online two weeks ago, titled Sympathy Project, offering "an online service tailored specifically for the communication around illness and death". 

Will this turn out to be a solution, and is this solution inevitable? Will there be online death notifications, only designed in a more personal way? Or will death remain in the realm we're uncomfortable to take part in virtually? 

Some of what I wrote here is in continuation to a discussion held in Digital Death Day unconference held in London in October 2012. The notes I took during it are available here. 

How to notify of a death in this digital era - part 1 is available here. 

How to notify of a death in this digital era - part 1

To be the second person posting about it

On July 23rd 2012, Barry Llewellyn called his aunt, 49 year old Cheryl Jones, asking what has happened to Karla James, her daughter (30 years old and the mother of a young girl). "What do you mean by 'what happened?'?", Cheryl asked. Barry had to tell her he saw "R.I.P.Karla" on Facebook, posted by Karla's friends. In obvious panic, Cheryl called her only daughter's mobile phone, only to have a police officer answer it in her stead, telling Cheryl that another police office will be over shortly. Karla collapsed close to her home - not far from her mother's home, in South Wales, UK - and was pronounced dead at 20:17.

The police arrived at Cheryl's house to notify her of Karla's death at 23:38 (Cheryl filed a complaint). Between 20:17 and 23:38, Karla's friends expressed their grief online on Facebook, Cheryl's nephew saw it, and you already know the rest. 

Cheryl holding a picture of Karla

On their 20th birthday, on February 7th 2010, twins Angela and Maryanne Vourlis woke and went online to see what greetings were already posted on their Facebook pages. Instead, they found "R.I.P. Bobby" and "R.I.P.Chris" postings: Bobby is their 17 year old brother, Chris is his best friend.

They weren't able to fathom what was going on and tried to get a hold of their brother by calling and texting him. When he didn't reply, they called their mother: "People in Facebook write that Chris has been killed, so that's probably true, but - what about Bobby? It's written in Facebook that he was killed too". Their mother said she didn't know where Bobby was at that moment and confirmed he did go out with Chris the previous night.

In this case, the sisters and their mother all learned of this death through Facebook. The mother called the nearest police station in attempts to track down her son. She received the heartbreaking news that Bobby and Chris (as well as another friend) were indeed dead - killed six hours earlier when the car they drove in crashed due to heavy rains, in Sydney, Australia. It took the police too long to reach the family. Facebook was faster. 

17 year old Bobby Vourlis 

On March 2nd 2011, when my brother, Tal Shavit, was killed, he was identified on the spot where the car had hit him. Since he was a public figure in Israel, so well known and well loved, news of his death traveled directly from the scene of his death and spread quickly - about half of Israel's population knew he was dead before we, his family, knew of it. The news spread quickly by word of mouth and, of course, went online as well. The managers of the various vehicles and motorcycles forums were caring and responsible enough to sit, glued to their screens that entire afternoon, and manually delete hundreds of messages posted by grieving forum members. They only approved messages in which Tal wasn't mentioned by name, until they were certain the family was notified. 

In one of the Israeli websites, nrg, the reporters and editors made a poor, unethical decision of going online with the "scoop" of my brother's death at a time in which neither of us - our sister, our parents, or me - knew of his death yet. Tal was a senior and much admired reporter and journalist and among other things, was head of the motorcycle section in another Israeli website, ynet.

In an unusual manner of conduct, the senior editors at ynet contacted the senior editors at nrg and demanded that this news item be taken offline. nrg did, and re posted it later, after the family was notified of Tal's death. It didn't happen, but our mother, my sister, or me, might have learned of Tal's death from surfing the net, or perhaps a relative might have seen it and called one of us to ask what had happened, and we would not have known what he was talking about (a good friend of mine, A., did see the item in nrg the first time it was online, when we didn't yet know. Fortunately for all of us: 1. A. was sensitive and clever: She didn't pick up the phone immediately - she first tried to determine if I had already been notified, 2. She had direct access to people who are close to me and aren't family members to find out discreetly through). 

When I discussed this with senior editors of vehicle and motorcycle websites in the days following Tal's death, one of them (and I apologize for not remembering which one of you it was) told me that in this case he was following the guideline stating: "I want my website to be the second one publishing such news, not the first". 

In Hebrew: Forum managers asking members not to mention my brother by name yet. 

There are 445 online replies in this thread.  

In Hebrew: The item in nrg that went online, then offline,
then online again at 17:24, after we were notified.

The Israeli media was perceived as uncaring and unthoughtful when Rona Ramon, widow of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, learned of her son's death in a plane crash through reporters and photojournalists massing outside her house. 

Are the "official sources" for death notifications, i.e. police forces and army forces, too slow in the digital era? Probably. But in these digital times, every one of us is a reporter, every one is a journalist, every one is part of the media, every one could be the person through which (heaven forbid) a daughter, mother or sister might find out about a death of a loved one. Therefore, each one of us should act responsibly, and aim to be the second, not the first, to post such tidings. 

We could also show sensitivity, and post death-related information only after an appropriate amount of time has passed (i.e. hours and not minutes, for example), or after discreetly determining if all members of the immediate family were notified. 

Thank you Andriana Cassimatis for telling me about Cheryl Jones earlier this month, when we both attended "Digital Death Day" in London. 


How to notify of a death in this digital era - part 2 can be read here.