The Person Holding the Phone
Mobile Phones and Mediated Grief-Work
Keywords:
Grief, mobile phone, virtual funeralAbstract
In this paper, I present a personal case study centered on my experience of attending my grandfather's funeral virtually in 2023. This event serves as a lens to explore broader themes of mediated grief work and the integration of digital media into experiences of death and mourning. Drawing on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, I analyze the formation of temporary digital mourning assemblages, examining the ties that connect participants both on the ground and online. A key focus is the role and impact of the human actor within technological and media interfaces. The person operating the phone, capturing images, and managing the technical aspects of a Zoom call is often overshadowed by discussions that prioritize the technology itself.
References
Ahlin, Tanja. 2023. Calling Family: Digital technologies and the making of transnational care collectives. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978834354
Alexis-Martin, Becky. 2020. “Sensing the deathscape: digital media and death during COVID-19.” Journal of Environmental Media 1 (1): 11.1–1.8. https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00032_1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00032_1
Baldassar, Loretta. 2014. “‘Too sick to move': distant 'crisis' care in transnational families.” International Review of Sociology 24 (3): 391–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.954328. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.954328
Basset, Debra. 2019. “Bereaved who take comfort in digital messages from dead loved ones live in fear of losing them.” The Conversation, 13 March. https://theconversation.com/bereaved-who-take-comfort-in-digital-messages-from-dead-loved-ones-live-in-fear-of-losing-them-109754.
Bravo, Vanessa. 2017. “Coping with dying and deaths at home: how undocumented migrants in the United States experience the process of transnational grieving.” Mortality 22: 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2016.1192590. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2016.1192590
Cann, Candi K. 2014. Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the dead in the twenty-first century. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813145419.001.0001
Cumiskey, Kathleen M., and Larissa Hjorth. 2017. Haunting Hands: Mobile media practices and loss. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634971.001.0001
Gach, Katie Z., and Jed R. Brubaker. 2021. “Getting your Facebook affairs in order: User expectations in post-mortem profile management.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5 (CSCW1): Article 174. https://doi.org/10.1145/3449248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3449248
Guntarik, Olivia. 2022. “Afterlife.” In Olivia Guntarik, Indigenous Resistance in the Digital Age: On Radical Hope in Dark Times, 161–173 Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17295-3_10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17295-3_10
Kneese, Tamara. 2023. Death Glitch: How techno-solutionism fails us in this life and beyond. New Haven: Yale University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300275001
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199256044.001.0001
Lingel, Jessa. 2013. “The digital remains: social media and practices of online grief.” The Information Society 29: 190–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2013.777311. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2013.777311
Live Web 360 and New Narrative. 2021. “Creating and Facilitating Virtual End of Life Events. A Step-by-Step Guide to Support Funeral Directors Working with Families During Social Distancing.” https://www.lifeweb360.com/resources-for-funeral-directors.
Maciel, Cristiano, and Vinícius Carvalho Pereira. 2013. Digital Legacy and Interaction: Post-Mortem Issues. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01631-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01631-3
Monsalve, Maria Monica. 2021. “Así fue como el coronavirus volvió más visible la enfermería en Colombia.” El Espectador, 26 September. https://www.elespectador.com/salud/coronavirus-enfermeria-en-colombia-la-profesion-que-la-pandemia-hizo-visible/.
Sánchez-Querubín, Natalia. 2023. “Transnational death and technological haunting.” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5: 1115824. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1115824. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1115824
Stokes, Patrick. 2012. “Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook?” Philosophy and Technology 25 (3): 363–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-011-0050-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-011-0050-7
Vanderbilt Health. 2022. “A Family’s Lifeline during COVID-19.” https://www.vanderbilthealth.org/rummo-family.
Widmaier, Lorenz. 2023. “Digital photographic legacies, mourning, and remembrance: looking through the eyes of the deceased.” Photographies 16 (1): 19–48: https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2022.2150879. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2022.2150879
Wright, Nicola. 2014. “Death and the Internet: the implications of the digital afterlife.” First Monday 19 (6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i6.4998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i6.4998
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Natalia Sánchez-Querubín
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal, provided it is for non-commercial uses; and that lets others excerpt, translate, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
