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This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
#Funerals and Instagram: Death, Social Media and Platform
Vernacular
This paper presents findings from a study of Instagram use and funerary practices
that analysed photographs shared on public profiles tagged with ‘#funeral’. We
found that the majority of images uploaded with the hashtag #funeral often
communicated a person’s emotional circumstances and affective context, and
allowed them to reposition their funeral experience amongst wider networks of
acquaintances, friends, and family. We argue that photo-sharing through
Instagram echoes broader shifts in commemorative and memorialization
practices, moving away from formal and institutionalized rituals to informal and
personalized, vernacular practices. Finally, we consider how Instagram’s
‘platform vernacular’ unfolds in relation to traditions and contexts of death,
mourning and memorialization. This research contributes to a broader
understanding of how platform vernaculars are shaped through the logics of
architecture and use. This research also directly contributes to the understanding
of death and digital media by examining how social media is being mobilized in
relation to death, the differences that different media platforms make, and the
ways social media are increasingly entwined with the places, events and rituals of
mourning.
Keywords: Instagram, platform vernacular, hashtag, funeral, photo-sharing, selfie
Introduction
There is a growing body of research examining the ways death is addressed in online
environments. Following the emergence of online memorials or ‘virtual cemeteries’
(Roberts, 2004) in the 1990s, and the more recent popularity of memorialized profiles
on social media platforms, scholars from a range of disciplines have become
increasingly interested in the digital mediation of death, commemoration and
memorialization. This work has examined how grief and social support takes shape in
online networks (Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Moss, 2004; Williams & Merten, 2009); and
how the dead persist and continue to participate as social actors through the platforms
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
and protocols of social networking sites (SNS) (Marwick & Ellison 2012; Stokes 2012).
In response to the growing number of dead users who persist in online environments
and the affective and instrumental issues created by this proliferation, platforms like
Facebook and Google have responded with policies for how the accounts of dead people
should be managed and how their online presences should be handled (Gibbs, Bellamy,
Arnold, Nansen & Kohn, 2013).
To date, with a few notable exceptions (Walter, Hourizi, Moncur & Pitsillides,
2011), little attention has been paid to how media platforms intersect with physical
environments, such as cemeteries, crematoriums or funerals, and the traditional
mourning practices that occur there. This has created an opportunity for research to
investigate how digital platforms mediate a variety of cultural practices associated with
death, mourning and commemoration. When scholars have focused on the meaning and
practices of memorialization they have tended to focus on particular SNS, especially
Myspace and Facebook, while other popular platforms have been largely neglected,
implicitly eliding differences between platforms, and the socio-cultural implications of
those differences. Consequently, in this paper we continue our own studies of emerging
practices associated with death and digital media (Gibbs et al. 2013; Kohn, Gibbs,
Arnold, & Nansen, 2012; Mori, Gibbs, Arnold, Nansen, & Kohn 2012) through an
exploration of the use of Instagram, the mobile, social networking platform for sharing
photographs and videos. In particular, motivated by the media furore that surrounded
the ‘selfies at funerals’ Tumblr blog (Fiefer, 2013) and the images of President Obama
posing for a selfie with the Prime Ministers of Denmark and the UK at the memorial
service for Nelson Mandela in late 2013 (Gibbs, Carter, Nansen & Kohn, 2014), we
decided to examine how photographs tagged with ‘#funeral’ mediate funerary events,
and explore the implications of this vernacular mode of visual communication for the
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
historical, cultural and material forms that take shape around death and
commemoration.
We begin this paper by briefly reviewing current scholarship on social media
and the dead. We then offer our term ‘platform vernacular’ as a way of understanding
how communication practices emerge within particular SNS to congeal as genres,
before considering how Instagram’s vernacular unfolds in the production and
circulation of photography labelled with #funeral. We outline our findings and assess
how various aspects of memorialization are mediated or redefined through the use of
Instagram. We conclude by considering the intersection of digital culture with
traditional memorializing practices, which we discuss in relation to social presence,
memorial photography and technological augmentation.
The dead on social media
The study of online memorialization has been largely revolved around the psychology
and sociology of grief and support. Early literature focused heavily on users of Web 1.0
memorial sites, analysing the posted content and online grieving processes (Moss, 2004;
Roberts, 2004). In these studies the internet was framed as a new medium for mourners
to come together in an informal setting to express and share their grief. Roberts (2004),
for example, examined descriptions of web memorials, guestbook entries, and surveyed
web memorial authors, finding that web 1.0 platforms not only served to create
communities of the bereaved in ‘cyberspace’ who shared their grief across geographic
distances, but also afforded opportunities for the bereaved to maintain or continue bonds
with the dead. These ‘virtual cemeteries’ built on stand-alone websites, had ‘clear
parallels with the role of the physical cemetery, which relocates the deceased to a place
which is accessible but separate from the spaces usually occupied by the living’
(Hutchings, 2012, p., 51). Web 2.0 social media platforms have different affordances,
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
enabling existing user profiles to be reworked to form memorials, and to gather existing
‘intimate publics’ (Berlant, 2008) as mourners around them. This appropriation of living
profiles for memorialization ‘integrates their mourning practices directly into their
ongoing social relationships’ (Hutchings, 2012, p., 51). As Walter et al. (2011) point
out, death is a social event and the use of a social media platform to mark this event is
to be expected.
While the dying are typically removed from daily life and placed in hospitals
and hospices, the dead are removed to funeral parlours and cemeteries, and institutional
commemoration occurs in demarcated places and at times structured for that purpose
(places of worship, cemeteries, funerals and so on), social media memorializations, like
roadside memorials, repositions the dead back within the flow of everyday life. People
continuing to visit and post on the profile pages of the deceased, and so maintain an
attachment with the deceased by integrating the dead into their ongoing social
relationships (Carroll & Landry, 2010; Williams & Merten, 2009). Noteworthy here is
the challenge posed to the sequestration of death (Walter et al., 2011) in time and in
place, and the positioning of death as the end of personhood. As Veale (2004) has
shown, the personhood of the dead online do not remain static, but continue to evolve
though the participatory construction of memories, bereavement and remembrance,
which Veale describes as a ‘collective memorial landscape’. Memorial pages persist
and scale through articulated networks in ways that allow for distributed and collective
representations of the dead to be constructed, necessitating curation (Marwick &
Ellison, 2012). The implications of these emergent, articulated representations include a
social life that persists beyond biological life, a construction of collective or
intersubjective memory (alongside subjective memory), and the establishment of the
grounds for potential conflict over these constructions.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Instagram and platform vernacular
Many of the practices outlined in the previous section are vernacular in form, and
depend in important ways on the social media platform being used. We argue that each
social media platform comes to have its own unique combination of styles, grammars
and logics, which can be considered as constituting a ‘platform vernacular’, or a
popular (as in ‘of the people’) genre of communication. These genres of communication
emerge from the affordances of particular social media platforms and the ways they are
appropriated and performed in practice. The affordances that are built into the hardware
and software of social media platforms delimit particular modes of expression or action
(Gillespie, 2010; Montfort & Bogost, 2009), and as a result prioritise particular forms of
social participation.
However the vernacular of a platform is also shaped by the mediated practices
and communicative habits of users. The Twitter hashtag stands as a paradigmatic
example of a form of expression that was established ‘through widespread community
use and adaptation’ rather than being ‘designed-in’ (Bruns & Burgess, 2011). Platform
vernaculars are shared (but not static) conventions and grammars of communication,
which emerge from the ongoing interactions between platforms and users. While
platform vernaculars are particular to social media platforms, it is also important to
acknowledge that they can share many elements, and the vocabulary and grammars of
vernaculars migrate between social media platforms as new practices and features from
one platform are appropriated for use on others.
The affordances and performances that constitute a vernacular are not
necessarily specific to a platform, as can be clearly seen through the use of hashtags
across a wide variety of online platforms. However, every platform has a vernacular
specific to it that has developed over time, through design, appropriation and use.
Studying a platform vernacular shifts focus from the extraordinary or spectacular use of
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
media platforms to the significance of ‘mundane and intensely social practices’
(Edensor, Leslie, Millington, & Rantisi, 2009, p., 10). Such an approach focuses on how
‘ordinary’ and everyday forms of communication operate within the constraints and
allowances of the platform architecture, but in turn creatively repurpose those
allowances and limitations for particular modes of expression and interaction. Efforts to
account for such creative engagements and appropriations of media have also been
established through the concept of ‘vernacular creativity’ (Burgess, 2006). This concept
focuses on forms of ‘cultural participation and self-representation’ (Burgess 2006, p.,
204), in order to account for the ‘specific dignity of everyday lives, expressed using
vernacular communicative means’ (Burgess, 2006, p., 206). The term ‘platform
vernacular’ extends this work by allowing us to consider these forms of creativity,
while also accounting for the specificities of the platform, its material architecture and
the collective cultural practices that operate on and through it.
By attending to the various material and structural affordances of platforms,
‘platform vernacular’ offers a useful new perspective on communication conventions.
Platform vernacular draws attention to how particulars genres and stylistic conventions
emerge within social networks and how – through the context and process of reading –
registers of meaning and affect are produced. This approach allows us to examine the
specificities of social media platforms (such as Instagram); attend to the particular
forms of participation that occur on them; situate these communicative acts in relation
to other scholarship on cultural production such as ‘vernacular creativity’ (Burgess,
2006); and to consider these forms of expression and memorialization as they relate to
social media’s increasingly ‘visual turn’.
Instagram, a portmanteau of Instamatic and telegram, is a popular social
networking service developed for smart phones and other mobile devices that allows
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
users to share photographs and short videos (for written clarity we will use the term
photograph or image to refer to both). It allows users to take square shaped photographs
similar in format to Kodak Instamatic photographs, rather than the more typical 3:4
aspect ratio of most smartphone images. It also allows users to apply a variety of
photographic filters that alter the shading, temperature, feel and presentation of the
images. Users can also add a short description to their photographs and then post them
online. These descriptions often take the form of hashtags, which allow users to insert
their photo into a wider ‘hashtag conversation’ (Bruns & Burgess, 2011). Finally,
photographs from Instagram can be shared across other social media platforms
including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Central to the platform vernacular of
Instagram are these affordances for photo-sharing, tagging images, and applying
photographic filters.
Another important property of the materiality of Instagram is that it is
overwhelmingly deployed on mobile devices. This property is obvious and easily
overlooked, but nonetheless it is critical to the vernacular by enabling Instagram to be
embedded within everyday practices. The ‘mediatization’ (Krotz, 2009) that Instagram
affords is interleaved with the materialised practices associated with everyday embodied
life. The online and the offline, the digital and the embodied, are able to be hybridised
in performative assemblages like funerals. Platform vernacular allows us to approach
#funeral photographs on Instagram as an everyday form of media practice, while also
considering historical media precedents, situating their material production, and
assessing how #funeral operates within contemporary aesthetics, sociality and rituals of
death.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Instagram and #Funerals
In order to explore these vernacular practices in relation to the Instagram platform and
the embodied event and traditional locations of funerals, we collected and analysed
material associated with the hashtag ‘funeral’. We manually downloaded all public
images and associated user data, text and comments with the funeral hashtag (#funeral)
posted to Instagram over two 24 hour periods on the 9th and 15th of February 2014,
which resulted in a data set of 525 images. We repeated this process approximately six
months later over another 24 hour period on the 31st of July in order to validate the first
wave of data collection. With a similar set of themes emerging from this dataset of 247
images, we decided to extend our analysis and investigate areas we had not yet covered
in our data collection, such as the use of filters and geo-tagging. We conducted a third
wave of data collection on the 5th and 10th of August, this time using Instagram’s API
to collect additional meta-data including the filters used and any geo-tags associated
with the collected images. This resulted in a third dataset of 558 images. Due to its
prominence on Instagram, in the final wave of data collection we also downloaded 739
images and related data associated with the hashtag ‘#RIP’, in order to get a
comparative sense of the different kinds of images tagged by a different but ostensibly
related hashtag. Examining #RIP allowed us to compare #funeral with a hashtag also
commonly associated with mourning and commemoration.
Using #funeral as the focus for our investigation largely limited our dataset and
our findings to the Anglophone world. There is scope for further research around the
use of digital technologies in mourning practices particular to other nations, cultures,
language and religious groups through the investigation of pertinent hashtags. We did
not collect photographs from private accounts for both ethical and practical reasons. We
recognise that this places some limits on the generalizability of our findings.
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This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Analysis proceeded through a process of open and axial coding to generate
codes and categories using a constructivist grounded-theory methodology (Charmaz,
2000). We then sorted these images into categories based on the different social
practices represented that emerged through inductive analysis (see Table 1). Each
photograph was placed in a single category. While most images clearly fell into a single
category, there were instances of images that could be categorised in multiple ways. For
example, an image of a group of people attending a funeral with flowers and a coffin
behind might fit any one of four categories. In such instances we categorized the
photograph based on the central foreground or focal point of the image. We discarded
71 photographs that were too vague or indistinct to categorize. Below we describe the
findings of this analysis, which are grouped into three broad themes: people, materials,
and culture. We then summarise our findings around the use of filters, location data and
the images tagged with #RIP.
People and mourning
Our analysis identified a diverse range of commemorative, mourning and cultural
practices occurring around the funeral hashtag on Instagram. The most prominent type
of photograph labelled #funeral was ‘individual selfies’: a self-portrait, usually taken in
a mirror or with the camera held at arm’s length. There were also many photographs of
individuals with the subject occupying the centre foreground and largely filling the
frame, but were evidently taken by somebody else. These images were often uploaded
by the photographic subject themselves, not the photographer, as indicated in the
comments on the photograph. From an examination of the images and associated text,
hashtags and comments, we decided that this latter group of images were substantively
similar to those categorised as individual selfies, in that they shared many of the
vernacular practices associated with the selfie.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Many of the #funeral photographs we categorized as selfies were associated with
hash-tags such as ‘#likeforlike’, ‘#sexy’, ‘#fashion’ or ‘#follow me’ and seemed to be
more about the subject’s self-presentation and self-promotion than an acknowledgment
of the solemnity and gravitas of funeral rites. In these images and their associated text
there did not appear to be any acknowledgment of the importance of the occasion, and
comments instead typically focused on the appearance of the user. However, the
majority of these photographs were not taken at the actual funeral but were often taken
in the bedroom, bathroom, or car. Indeed, this form on self-presentation arguably
emerged from the intersection of Instagram with long-standing traditions in Western
cultures requiring funeral-goers to ‘dress up’ in formal attire and look good for the
ceremony. In contrast, a noteworthy number of selfies were more reflective. Hashtags
such as ‘#sadday’, ‘#nothappy’, ‘#notsmiling’ or ‘#sad’ acknowledged the solemnity of
the occasion. The text accompanying the Instagram image was also often used to reflect
on or engage with the funeral. Particular selfie takers hoped that ‘relatives were talking
to God right now’ or said that they were ‘not ready to go to this funeral’, and comments
on these selfies often reflected the sombre tone. The discursive field of multiple
hashtags, accompanying captions and comments from other people indicates an
expansive practice of communication that exceeded simple self-representation,
revealing efforts to also express emotion, solidarity or connection with others.
Another common photographic theme was the expression of family or
togetherness through the sharing of photographs featuring groups of people (often
family members) gathered together. There were also a number of group shots taken by
one of the subjects in the photograph. These could also have also been coded as selfies
in that they were taken by a subject in the image, but thematically they had more in
common with family or group photographs. Nearly all of both types of group shot
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
appear to have been taken at wakes or other gatherings that followed the funeral or
memorial service. The prevalence of family or group shots underlines the importance of
the funeral as a social occasion. It is perhaps one of the few times when extended
families and friends gather together in one place. These photographs, along with the
associated comments and hashtags, appeared to be efforts to communicate and share
feelings of intimacy, togetherness, family, friendship and attachment. They often
featured smiling faces, a shift away from an affect of loss or mourning. These
photographs celebrated the deceased’s intimate and social connections and the
community drawn together by the event of their passing. Only a handful of photographs,
taken at funerals with open caskets, showed an image of the deceased. However, this is
unsurprising given contemporary practices of sequestration of death (Mellor & Shilling,
1993), and the decline in public viewing of the deceased (Walter, 2005).
The materiality of death
Photographs taken of the service and the interring were common, but these rarely
captured individuals mourning. Instead there was a strong focus on the event and its
rituals, often taken from a distance, with people present but no longer the focal point of
the image. Some of these photographs highlighted the temporal unfolding of the process
of the funeral, and featured images of the coffin, grave, hearses, or vehicles in the
funeral procession. Another set of images highlighted the funeral as a ritualized event,
by capturing the material elements of the funeral, included images of funeral service
cards, clothes or food. Frequent among these were images of funeral flowers, elaborate
and colourful bouquets that typically occupied the entire frame. Only a few of these
images were overtly religious.
There were very few images of headstones, urns or plaques. We speculate that
this is because of the character of the funeral hashtag. Events and activities tagged with
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
#funeral were typically associated with the funeral event itself, before the ashes had
been received or the headstone erected.
In an interesting example of remediation, a further set of images featured
screenshots of related posts or funeral announcements containing information about the
time and location of the funeral. There were also images of old photographs featuring
the deceased. There was also an emergent commercial element to some of these
material engagements with death. A few images promoted a commercial florist and a
funeral worker used #funeral to show off her new business card.
In addition to focusing on the event and the materiality of the funeral, there were
also a number of photographs of landscapes as well as images of locations, places or
buildings. These images appeared to be efforts to capture and communicate the mood
and sentiment of the event in a way that is more abstract than literal, often focusing on
elements of the natural environment such as the sky, trees, the graveyard, or on
elaborate aspects of the built environment, such as a church’s architectural detail.
Instrumental uses of Instagram were also represented in this category, for example
posting screenshots of weather forecasts on the day of the funeral.
Memes, popular culture and #funeral
While many of the #funeral photographs were dedicated to the funerals of family or
friends, our analysis also revealed a range of other uses for the hashtag. These
engagements included images highlighting the ‘death’ of inanimate objects, especially
digital devices such as mobile phones and laptops. In addition, there were photographs
commemorating the death of a pet or other animal, typically featuring burial in the
earth, or in the case of pet goldfish, being flushed down the toilet. These #funeral
images use the platform to express attachment to these non-humans with a mixture of
sentiment, both heartfelt and ironic. They illustrate the way formal, sacred and
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
institutionalised rituals commingle with individualised profane, subjective and
sometimes improvised events in the platform vernacular. This use of the funeral hashtag
highlights the possibilities enabled by the platform mechanics and by users’ own
creative engagements.
The interrelation of media forms and the flow of content across these forms were
further accentuated by the prominence of memes and popular culture references that
carried the funeral hashtag. Apart from individual selfies, these two categories were the
most prominent. Some memes such as images with captions like ‘I wear black when I
exercise, it's like a funeral for my fat’, were metaphorically related to funerals and
commemoration. However, other memes directly engaged with wider cultures and the
way these intersect with the cultural particularities of funerals. One meme stated ‘“I’m
sorry” and “my bad” mean exactly the same thing … unless you’re at a funeral’.
Another stated, ‘At my funeral, when they’re lowering me into the ground, I demand
they play … “Drop it like it’s hot”’. Popular culture images often centred on specific
references, such as Arcade Fire’s Funeral album, in the context of people attending a
live performance by the band. The album was given this title because members of the
band had lost family members around the time it was recorded, and the funeral hashtag
referentially connected the band’s live performance to the album and then back to the
funerals of their family members. Other photos directly referenced funerals (or
discussions around death) on television shows (for example, Adventure Time) or in
books. Users also referenced particular songs they would like to be played at their
funeral, and discussing various forms of speculative memorialization.
Other interesting forms of cultural production in the use of #funeral involved
sharing photographic montages, which form an interesting vernacular response to grief
and mourning. Montages are not native to the Instagram platform. However, users can
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
turn to a range of editing applications to create them and then upload the completed
product to Instagram. Although these processes are not technically complex, the
deployment of montages allowed users to engage in a variety of creative comparisons.
Examples included the linking of the self to the deceased through the juxtaposing of a
selfie with an old photo of a dead relative, linking the site of the grave to balloons
released during the funeral, or providing a comprehensive set of photographs that
construct a non-linear narrative of the funeral itself. These montages showed how users
were able to work around the limitations of the platform and push the platform’s
boundaries in order to sustain specific forms of vernacular practice.
Filters, geo-tagging and #RIP
Our final wave of data collection revealed some interesting patterns in regards to the use
of Instagram’s filters and locative data. While a detailed discussion is beyond the scope
of this paper, we report our findings here to outline potential future research trajectories.
It is notable that considering the growing significance of locative media within
discourses about social media (Wilken & Goggin, 2014), only a small subset of users
(6.95%) added location data when posting photographs with the funeral hashtag. This
raises questions about the specific places and events where locative technologies are
deployed and the extent of their prominence in vernacular practices (Schwartz &
Halegoua, 2014). The platform’s affordances appear to be selectively deployed, the
context of use thereby shaping the platform vernacular, although it is unclear from our
data why this is the case.
Filtering was also surprisingly underutilized in the photographs in our dataset.
While filters and Instagram seem to be inextricably linked in public discourse around
the application (Hochman & Manovich, 2013), only 33% of photographs used filters,
with Amaro, X-Pro II and Valencia being the most popular. This proportion is
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
substantially lower than the 68 to 81 per cent of filtered photographs reported by
Hochman & Manovich (2013). This also highlights the importance of use and context in
regards to a platform’s vernacular, and the extent to which users prioritise some
affordances (selfies) over others (filtering and geo-tagging).
Our third wave of data collection also provided an insight into the differences
between the use of #funeral and #RIP. The RIP hashtag presented a much different
picture of commemoration to #funeral. Photos of dead celebrities and old photographs
of deceased friends and family were prominent, marking #RIP as a space for performing
commemoration and memorial work. This stood in dramatic contrast to #funeral, which
was centred on and around the funeral event, moments of self-reflection, and pictures of
family togetherness. Future work could consider and compare these different
temporalities of death and how various hashtags are mobilized around them.
Discussion: Instagram practices around death, mourning and
commemoration
Instagram differs from other digital platforms that have previously been the focus of
research on social media and death. The platform is oriented around photo and video-
sharing rather than purely textual comments, and while some features such as tagging,
liking and commenting are common, other available features such as applying image
filters are apparently less so. In turn, the ways in which the platform is put to use differ
substantially from other social media. Other SNS, such as Facebook, have profiles and
walls belonging to the deceased, which provide a locus for ‘networked publics’
(Varnelis, 2008) to converge and interact. These profiles can also be memorialized after
death, helping to create a shared and sacred place for mourning and commemoration. In
contrast, Instagram has no convergent or shared spaces dedicated to the deceased where
the bereaved can congregate. Instagram users are restricted to posting materials to their
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
own profile; a space others cannot directly post to, although their followers can like and
comment on shared photographs. Connections to other, collectively-defined networks of
users are made through #hashtags and @user labelling conventions. In this way, the
places for mourning on Instagram are found in conversations defined by consensus
around hashtags such as ‘#fuckcancer’, rather than around a profile of the deceased, and
as a result they are more decentred and far more rhizomatic than the mourning
conversations found on other social media. The platform vernacular of Instagram is
emergent in its network links (or edges), whereas the platform vernacular of Facebook
is emergent in its network nodes.
The implications of this platform architecture for emerging cultural practices of
mourning and commemoration can be found in the ways different users engage with
#funeral. Of particular note are the diverse and sometimes competing content connected
to the hashtag, and in turn, how #funeral and hashtags more generally are understood in
mediating interaction. The meaning of ‘funeral’ as a particular lived experience, as a
culturally determined ritual, and as a meme, is actively shaped, asserted and contested
each time the #funeral tag is applied to an image. In the following discussion we
address some of the more prominent themes that emerged from our analysis of the
platform vernacular around #funeral: sociality; memory and memorialization; death and
technology.
Sociality: Communicative presencing, and networked publics
The most frequent category of #funeral photographs was the selfie. We are aware of
recent controversy and media attention surrounding ‘selfies at funerals’ (Fiefer, 2013)
and, more generally, their exemplification of supposedly narcissistic and insincere
youthful practices (Gibbs, et al., 2014). Many of the photographs we categorized as
selfies were associated with self-referencing and self-promoting hash-tags, and seemed
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
to be concerned with the presentation of the self rather than acknowledging the gravitas
of the funeral. But other photographs were often captioned with comments about trying
to maintain a brave face, or composure, often for the benefit of others, which suggests
an awareness of the profound emotional charge of funerals and a tension between inner
affect and external presentation. Family photographs and group shots also seemed to be
efforts to express togetherness, and were typically accompanied by respectful hashtags
that did not have an expectation of strangers searching and liking personal photographs
(as ‘#sexy’ or ‘#likeforlike’ might). Rather, the associated comments and the
compositions of these photographs typically highlighted shared mourning and sadness,
or the reunion of extended family, or the gathering of friends. These images of gathered
groups taken at funerals also regularly featured smiling faces, and appeared to reflect
the wider cultural shift from funeral rituals that mourn the dead, to rituals that celebrate
the life of the deceased and the social networks drawn together by the funeral.
We therefore suggest that not all selfies and happy group shots can be
interpreted as merely being concerned with the profane presentation of self. Many
appear to be an attempt to share the experience of grief, placing emphasis on the
significance of the context in which the image was taken through the message in the
accompanying text, rather than the significance of the people in the photograph. For
these people, we suggest that the use of #funeral is drawing on, and constrained by, the
architecture and rhetorical style of Instagram use: a smart-phone platform that allows
users to instigate a conversation with their social network by sharing photographs. This
use of Instagram demonstrates a tension between the mundane ubiquity and profane
casualness of a photo-sharing vernacular that is normatively self-centred, and
expectations about personal conduct in a ritual with a focus on the deceased, and
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
vestiges of formality that remain strong, despite the ritual’s increasing
deinstitutionalisation.
In the context of this tension, we argue that the funeral hashtag is not self-
centring, but is a form of ‘presencing’ (Richardson & Wilken, 2012), which allow users
to draw on recognised tropes in order to reposition their funeral experience among their
wider network of friends, and concomitantly, to reposition their wider network in
relation to the funeral. Following van Dijck (2008), we argue that the act of sharing
photographs associated with funerals through Instagram largely serves a communicative
function. We contend that the central aim of sharing these images is to signify presence,
and to communicate an important context and affective situation to a wider social
network. Contemporary funerals are social experiences for those who are present, and it
is unsurprising that mourners are also seeking a sense of proximity, connection and co-
presence with friends, family and acquaintances that may not be present. These
photographs are, in many ways, intended to be an ephemeral and creative forms of live
communication that are part of the ongoing streams of social intercourse for the people
involved. These images are not so much presentations of self, but can be understood as
part of an ongoing networked conversation extending the subjectivity of the social ritual
from those present to those not present, through the particular vernacular of the
Instagram platform. Photo-sharing through Instagram can been seen as part of a broader
shift in commemorative and memorialization practices away from formal and
institutionalized rituals that are sequestered from daily life and mundane practices, to
practices that are more informal and personalized, and deploy routine vernacular rituals,
such as re-presencing the funeral via Instagram.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Memory and memorialization: Death photography and photographs as memory
The association between photography and the dead is as old as photography itself. In the
late nineteenth century, following the invention of the daguerreotype, post-mortem
photography was a not uncommon practice in which the recently deceased were
arranged in ‘still life-like presence’ and ‘displayed within spaces occupied by the living’
(Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p. 145-146). This practice allowed people to ‘memorialize
persons at the final stage of life’ (Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p. 144); photographs of the
dead were displayed prominently in the parlour, making the images ‘visible to both
family members and visitors to private houses’ (Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p. 146).
However, for reasons Hallam and Hockey (2001) explore, these practices slowly
changed and by the mid-twentieth century the dead body was largely hidden, both
literally and in photographs, and images of the living person became the locus of
attention in the material production of family memory.
The photo-sharing practices we have identified suggest a continuing and
changing relationship between death and photography. The prevalence of individual
portraits, group images and images of funeral rituals and funeral materials indicates a
shift in the vernacular uses of photography associated with death. No longer do we
simply remember the deceased in death or in life, instead we also visually communicate
the presence of the situated self in relation to the funeral to a wider social network.
Group photographs and photographs of the material culture of funerals record and
situate the event for a remote audience, and situate the remote audience at the event.
The camera-phone enables a form of intimate co-presence amongst friends and the
particular affordances of the Instagram platform makes this form of presencing
increasingly networked and visible. Through this platform vernacular, one can readily
position oneself in a context that is subjectively and socially significant, and mobilise
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
that presence and that significance across time and space through social media
networks.
Instagram and similar photo-sharing social media platforms thus form part of
more general changes in the visual tradition associated with photography and the dead.
The networked publics of social media are a much wider and more easily accessible
audience than was available to mourners during much of the twentieth century. The
activity associated with #funeral continues historic shifts in the wider photographic
traditions associated with death. It also contributes to the reversal of the trend towards
privacy of mourning and sequestration of the dead more generally. Indeed, the wide
public display of these photographs – either to a particular networked public using a
private account or to the public at large using a public Instagram account – suggests that
these practices are once again prioritising public and semi-public displays of mourning
rites that were largely kept private and unseen in the latter half of the last century. These
photo-sharing practices hark back to an earlier time when mourning was a public and
communal affair.
The platform vernacular of Instagram has only recently become possible through
the spread of networked cameras that assemble wireless internet connections, mobile
and camera-phone hardware, and image-sharing software platforms. The networked
camera allows a platform vernacular of instantaneous recording and sharing. This
immediacy and the reach of networked presencing performs a communicative function
that diverges from the historical use of memorial photography for remembrance or
reflection. Yet, rather than erasing photography’s commemorative function, photo-
sharing continues to play a role in memory and memorializing. The evocative
photographs on the family mantelpiece are now the evocative photographs on the family
networks. Capturing the event, and the self at the event, brings the event to the presence
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
of others, and preserves the funeral as an episode within an individual’s various shared
media streams.
For example, Instagram photography is immediate, routine, deskilled and casual,
in contrast to earlier photographic platforms that required more deliberate and formal
image construction. But perhaps the most significant shift relates to the network
affordance of the Instagram platform. The role of the photograph as a prosthetic devices
mediating memory within personal, family or private contexts, reaches out to situations
that are increasingly public and collective. This ‘distributed storage’ of photographs
renders private images as public property: ‘personal “live” pictures sent around
through the internet may remain there for life, turning up in unforeseen contexts,
reframed and repurposed’ (Van Dijck, 2008, p. 14-15). In this sense, Instagram is more
selfless than self-centred, in that an Instagram image is taken on behalf of others, in
order to be distributed to others, whereas a conventional photograph is not necessarily
distributed, and may exist by the photographer, for the photographer.
Death and technology: Augmented funerals and informal mourning
The use of Instagram in and around funerals can also be linked to socioeconomic and
cultural changes that have seen many activities moving from the domestic economy to
the market economy. In the market economy, firms within the funeral industry are
‘enthusiastically embracing the technologies and financial instruments that make
possible everything from niche marketing and branding to pre-payment and credit
financing’ (Sanders, 2009, p. 452), including service offerings such as ‘internet
memorials, scrapbooks, DVD tributes, bracelet charms, T-shirts, plaques, and eating
and writing utensils’ (Sanders, 2009, p. 456). However, the ongoing extension of
technologies and products into the realm of death, from daguerreotypes to DVD
tributes, is not simply an effect of commercial initiatives. The increasing use of digital
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
media within funerals is driven by consumers as well as industry, with families of the
deceased and the deceased themselves planning funerals around the deployment of
various media and related technological forms (Garces-Foley & Holcomb, 2005).
Contemporary funerals in the Anglophone world regularly feature PowerPoint
photo presentations; some funeral directors and crematoriums now offer video
streaming for friends and family who cannot attend in person; graves can be linked to
memorial websites through QR codes inscribed on the gravestones themselves (Nansen,
Arnold, Gibbs, & Kohn, 2014). It has also become common practice to play popular
music at funerals, in contrast to sacred music, and funerals often include other informal,
idiosyncratic and personalized rituals, such as placing personally significant artefacts on
the coffin. Many of the practices identified through an examination of #funeral echo and
augment these contemporary funeral practices, rather than being at odds with them.
Photo-sharing on Instagram is an informal, personal, idiosyncratic and highly social
practice that is readily appropriated as funerals shift from institutionalized and formal
rituals to vernacular events, with individuals and their families increasingly engaging in
forms of informal and personalized memorialization.
In the context of the widespread deployment of media at funerals, and the move
to informality and personalization, it is completely understandable, if not mundane and
banal, that a funeral attendee would seek to engage with a funeral through their
Instagram account. Indeed, Instagram’s scope for a wide range of memorial responses,
from creative forms of photography to quick group shots – each of which can be
immediately distributed – highlights the way the platform provides a wide range of
important affordances for funeral-goers.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Conclusion
Photographs shared through platforms such as Instagram, Flickr, and SnapChat have
become an important online ‘social currency’ (Rainie, Brenner, & Purchell, 2012) and
photo-sharing practices are becoming increasingly common (Duggan, 2013). In this
paper we have explored photo-sharing associated with funerals through an examination
of the use of #funeral on Instagram and considered the implications of these practices.
We found that Instagram is used while in the moment, to mark the funeral event,
location and experience, and as such its use acts as a form of presencing,
communicating a person’s emotional circumstances and affective context. Photographs
are also used to record and share important material elements, rituals, and the gathering
together of friends and family at the funeral. We have argued that the central aim of
sharing funeral images is to signify and communicate presence, and thus share an
important event and affective experience to a wider social network. Contemporary
funerals are social experiences, and mourners are sharing photographs to create a sense
of proximity, connection and co-presence with friends, family and acquaintances that
may not be present.
Future research needs to look beyond Facebook and attend to the variety of
social media and other technologies being mobilized in practices associated with death,
grieving and commemoration. Future research might also make further use of platform
APIs in order to explore similar hashtags and the relationships between them, as well as
the role and function, if any, of locative technologies and image filtering in these
practices. There is also a need to attend to the ways in which various social media
platforms interact within the complexity of contemporary media ecologies, and how
these cross-platform practices intersect with, support, and appropriate traditional
commemorative and funerary practices.
This article has been published in Information, Communication & Society DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects
funding scheme (project number DP140101871); and the Institute for a Broadband
Enabled Society. We want to thank Mitchell Harrop for his assistance with data
collection.
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