Few religious leaders have examined the potential for the positive impact of digital media and digital immortality creation in religious contexts. It is evident that there have been recent moves away from traditional funeral services focusing on the transition of the deceased into the future world beyond, towards a rise of memorial content within funerals and commemorative events. This has heralded shifts in afterlife beliefs by replacing them, to all intents and purposes, by attitudes to this life.
Digital Afterlife and the Spiritual Realm explores the ways in which digital media and digital afterlife creation affects social and religious understandings of death and the afterlife.
Features
- Understands the impact of digital media on those living and those working with the bereaved
- Explores the impact of digital memorialisation post death
- Examines the ways in which digital media may be changing conceptions and theologies of death
For many people, digital afterlife and the spiritual realm largely remains an area that is both inchoate and confusing. This book will begin to unravel some of this bafflement.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
Chapter 1 Digital Afterlife and the Spiritual realm
Chapter 2 Religion and Afterlife
Chapter 3 Impact of the digital on the bereaved
Chapter 4 Digital Theologies and Death
Chapter 5 Death Spaces
Chapter 6 A Good Digital Death
Chapter 7 Death and the Liminal
Chapter 8 Symbols and Memorialization
Chapter 9 Perspectives on Digital Afterlife
Chapter 10 Digital Legacy
Chapter 11 Ambivalence and Spectacle
Chapter 12 The Final Cut
References
Glossary
Index
Biography
Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Education at the University of Worcester and has researched and evaluated staff and student experience of learning for over 20 years and gained funding in this area (Leverhulme Trust, JISC, Higher Education Academy, MoD). She has a strong publication record of over 50 research publications and 17 books which reflect her research interests on the impact of innovative learning, digital fluency, cyber-influence, pedagogical agents, qualitative research methods, and problem-based learning. In her spare time, she runs, bakes, climbs and attempts triathlons.
