Research Topic

I recently came upon something on Facebook that actually made me think for a while. I came across the profile of someone who had recently died, and saw how their wall had transformed from a simple message board to a public forum to eulogize the person. Facebook has now become so much a part of our lives that it is no longer a prerequisite to be physically alive to be virtually alive on Facebook. So, all of these thoughts and observations led me to come up with the following questions:

· What forms an online identity, and how can it continue after death?

· How do people use online communities to grieve for others?

· What are the ramifications of people using online community for this purpose, what legal and ethical problems arise?

While Facebook gave me the idea for this topic, I think MySpace would be a better community to observe and research. First, MySpace is a more open community, and I can have access more profiles. Also, as disturbing as it may be, there is a web page, MyDeathSpace, where news articles of deaths of young people are posted, along with links to their MySpace profiles. From just a few minutes on these sites, I found dozens of profiles for people who have passed away recently, or even years ago. Some of the profiles have been updated by family or others, while some still have the last posts by the deceased person. The profiles range from ordinary people who have died, to soldiers in Iraq, to celebrities and even to the extreme of memorializing Barbaro the racehorse.

While this issue fascinates me, I think it is also one that must be dealt with carefully. I don’t want to exploit the deaths of young people for a paper. I think the topic has the possibility of feeling very morbid or just plain depressing.

However, I think the benefits of researching this topic outweigh the risks. I think death is very much a part of life, and now it is becoming the same way with digital lives. I think it is important to look at the consequences both positive and negative of expressing grief in these ways.

How could I learn from this? It took me a while to see the connection from online grief to my major of public relations. One area of PR that I would be interested working in after college would be for a hospital. I have a feeling that issue will become a major obstacle for hospital PR as online communities continue to grow. I found the MySpace profiles of two young people who died after having cosmetic surgeries. How is the hospital effected by medical information posted on these sites? What about privacy laws and HIPPA? If the hospital cannot give media all of the information about a death, will they turn to MySpace to find out what went wrong? While I don’t intend to make this a case study for a hospital, I think researching this area will allow me to be more aware of it and understand some of the concerns that arise from it.

While my initial thoughts on this research topic are very broad in nature, I hope to condense them further into a workable topic. My basic question is, “How do people use online communities, like MySpace to grieve?”

As to the nature of the report, I would like to pursue a non-traditional paper option; perhaps, a website. My only hesitance in presenting the paper in a web format is that linked profiles of people who have died may be removed or restricted at any point, thus leaving broken links.