Afterlife Presence on Facebook: a Preliminary Examination of Wall Posts on the Deceased’s Profiles Luis A. Castro Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) lcastro@cicese.mx Victor M. González Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) victor.gonzalez@itam.mx Abstract When somebody dies, her or his presence might still be hanging around others’ lives on Social Networking Sites (SNS). Several factors might influence the way we perceive this digital presence after the death including personal and religious beliefs. In this work, we present results from a study aimed at examining the differences between the way we perceive an online profile before and after the owner of the profile has died. In the few weeks following the death, the digital presence seems to become more salient, although this salience might be only transient. Our findings highlight not only the importance of studying this area, but also raise further questions within this area than need to be addressed in order to better understand this topic. 1. Introduction These days, the dead might be still able to ‘hang around’ the living within the same social circles and thus many socio-cultural manifestations and personal beliefs can be potentially observed online with the ever increasing penetration of SNSs in daily life. Whereas online memorials have been in place for several years, the digital presence of the dead on SNSs is what seems to make a difference these days. Online profiles of dead people are not being moved onto or created on websites that you can sporadically visit – as you would visit a graveyard− but they are now within our personal social networks. Therefore, having them ‘ hanging around’ your living friends might lead to uncomfortable situations [10]. On the other hand, SNS profiles can be used as a way of maintaining bonds with the deceased [2]. Having a means to send messages to your dead friend can be useful in the grieving process. Therefore, it is important to understand how people perceive the digital presence of the dead through SNSs to maintain certain forms of contact and perhaps cope with their loss. In HCI, there has been a growing interest in death- related topics. As an example, at CHI 2010 there was a workshop entitled “HCI at the End of Life” where an interesting forum was established around the areas of opportunity for HCI researchers interested in this topic. Among other works in HCI, [7] introduced the concept of thanatosensitivity to describe the area in which HCI researchers, computer systems, death-related issues converge. Other studies include research with the bereaved to understand the way they make sense of their loss [8], and examine implications of inheriting technology [6] as a way to reveal opportunities for design. Understanding how techno-spiritual practices can emerge as part of the many affordances provided by technology is discussed in [1]. Finally, after analyzing the message boards of some memorial groups on Facebook, DeGroot found some common topics that the bereaved discuss such as memories, spiritual-related comments, expressions of shock and lamentations, messages related to continued forms of presence of the dead, and messages related to the maintenance of bonds with the dead [4]. Thus, to study the presence of the dead on SNSs, we propose social presence as a theoretical framework. Social presence is a concept that has its origins in communication media research aiming to understand the social effects of communication technology [9]. Formally, social presence is defined as “the salience of the other in a mediated communication and the consequent salience of their interpersonal interactions”. Social presence assesses media based on the degree of awareness of the other in a communication exchange. In other words, the degree to which the other party in a communication dyad is perceived to be a ‘real person’. One could argue that the extent to which the digital presence —represented by an online profile— can be perceived as ‘real’ can remain the same even when there is no physical presence behind (i.e., after somebody dies). In some way, this perception can be influenced by several factors that also come into play when trying to make sense of the afterlife presence on digital media. In this paper, we present results from a study aimed at examining the differences between the way we perceive an online profile before and after the owner of that profile has passed away. In part, this study is motivated by the idea of understanding the different perceptions of the digital