Mediated Death. Johanna Sumiala

rituals organized as Facebook events. For some of us, however, hybrid media mourning and commemoration are not enough. I have noticed an emerging interest in digital afterlife, immortality, and life with ‘digital zombies’, as Debra Bassett (2015) characterizes this type of digitally immersed, post-mortal existence.

This book constitutes an attempt to make sense of these historical, social, and cultural transformations in the mediation of death, and to understand how the shifting dynamics in our communication environment shape the multitude of ritual responses that we, as inhabitants of a society saturated by hybrid media, generate to cope with death, and the fear of annihilation that it triggers. In the words of media theorist Mark Deuze (2012), we can only ‘imagine life outside media’. Hence, every study of death as mediated in present-day hybrid media is, in fact, an investigation into the meaning and significance of death in contemporary society.

      As I began to put the various pieces of this manuscript together, a death event of an unimaginable scale was unfolding in hybrid media. In February and March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic stretched across the globe, halting societies, closing borders, and forcing people to stay home. Death as mediated was the main news story for months. Bodies laid on the streets and in hotels, mass graves, overcrowded hospitals, traumatized medical workers, desperate family members, lost politicians, and angry crowds inundated our public lives through all forms of media, making it impossible to escape death.

Importantly, something else happened. People did not just stare at the rising death toll on the news – they started to act. Rituals of mourning, solidarity, and support spread throughout hybrid media. People were clapping, banging kettles, and singing together from their balconies throughout Europe and the world, and these gatherings were recorded and posted on social media. Italians sang the old partisan song ‘Bella Ciao’ to keep up their spirits during the lockdown. In the UK, people gathered to offer thanks to the National Health Service, and children drew rainbows to foster hope (Sumiala, 2021). These symbolic acts demonstrated the power of mediated rituals to unify people in the face of ubiquitous public death. Unsurprisingly, however, many other types of symbolic performances and rituals circulated throughout hybrid media. People held demonstrations against government decisions to restrict people’s right to move freely by closing down businesses and other institutions. Conspiracy theories about the virus emerged in hybrid media. As of the publication of this book, these phenomena are ongoing. New waves and virus mutations continue to make headlines alongside the news of vaccination campaigns. While we cannot be certain of how our lives will continue to be shaped by the virus in the near – let alone the more distant – future, there is one thing that we do know: death as hypermediated has left a historical mark in the collective memory of the inhabitants of our digitally immersed society.

      Figure 0.1 COVID-19 mural in Helsinki.

      Courtesy of Ester Speeänen.

Book projects are always collective efforts in several respects, and this book is no exception. I could not have pulled this project together without the encouragement, inspiration, and support I received from my colleagues. I wish to thank the international community of scholars on media and death, of which I am proud to be a part. Special thanks go to Barbie Zelizer, Lilie Chouliaraki, and John Durham Peters for the intellectual inspiration and insight that you have shared with me during the process of writing this book. I must also offer my warm thanks to Amanda Lagerkvist for the many philosophical – if not existential – dialogues that we have had on this very topic. Thank you, Dorthe Refslund Christensen – and Kjetil Sandvik, who is somewhere out there – for your founding work on media, death, and continuous bonds, and for your efforts in building up and maintaining the Nordic network of online death; it would not be the same without you. I also want to thank Tony Walter and Tal Morse for our conversations and your work on media, society, and death, which I have found extremely helpful in thinking about the interplay between death in society, news, and social media. In addition, I want to share my thanks to David Hesmondhalgh, whose academic interest in popular music and culture enlightened my work on the life and death of David Bowie and made me realize that what we consider ‘real’ life in academic work and the world of ‘fiction’ can sometimes overlap in the most curious way.

Three academic institutions have been vital in providing the necessary means and support to finalize this book. I wish to thank my home institution, the University of Helsinki, and, in particular, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where I started this project. The Austrian Academy of Sciences and its lead professor, Dr Mathias Karamasin, generously offered me the chance to focus on my writing in Spring 2019. The London School of Economics and Political Science and Professor Nick Couldry in its Department of Media and Communications kindly invited me as a visiting fellow and provided important support throughout the writing process. For external financial support, I want to express my gratitude to The Finnish Nonfiction Writers Association for the grant that I was awarded in the very early stage of this project.

      ‘Home is where your heart is’, they say. I wish to express my warm thanks for their co-authorship, intellectual encouragement, collegial support, and friendship to my Finnish colleagues, who have so generously offered their care and have helped me with various intellectual and practical challenges. Thank you, Katja Valaskivi, Minttu Tikka, Anu Harju, Salli Hakala, Lotta Lounasmeri, Lilly Korpiola, and many others with whom I have had a chance to share this academic and personal journey. Thanks for bearing with me during the not-so-cheerful moments of this project.

      I have been fortunate to have worked with numerous wonderful research assistants. Thank you, Maiju Lehikoinen, Annaliina Niitamo, Roosa Kontiokari, Anna-Liisa Heino, and Alli Wartiovaara for your precise work on polishing this manuscript. I must also express my warmest thanks to Polity Press and its supportive and highly professional editorial staff, including Mary Savigar, Ellen McDonald-Kramer, and Stephanie Homer. Any shortcomings of this book are mine and mine alone.

Finally, I wish to thank my family. Janne – my life companion and a fellow academic – not only has the brain and the heart but also the stomach to listen to my endless morbid reflections on death, be it at the breakfast table, while watching telly, or on a highway driving to our summer cottage. I love the way that you say, ‘my wife, a scholar of mediated death ritual’ with a certain tone of your voice. For my final thanks, I want to dedicate this book to my two beautiful daughters, Elisa and Ester – now young adults. I gave you birth, but it is you who have given me so much life, meaning, and joy on my earthly journey that it almost hurts to think about it. Thank you.

1 Mediating Death

       Death is ultimately nothing more than the social line of demarcation separating the ‘dead’ from the ‘living’: therefore, it affects both equally.

      Baudrillard, 1993, p. 127

On 20 January 2014, Mrs Hayley Cropper (played by British actress Julie Hesmondhalgh), terminally ill of pancreatic cancer, took her own life in the iconic Coronation Street, the longest-running soap opera in the history of television (Wilson, 2014). Hayley, with no chance of recovery, decided to end her suffering before the illness could cause her unbearable pain. This decision was not easily made, with the final, decisive act being the culmination of months of slow-building television. The tragic screening was heavily publicized on ITV throughout the previous weekend. British media prepared viewers for it by providing a space for a public debate about whether Hayley’s decision was morally justified. The show’s producers brought experts into the studio to discuss Hayley’s death. The death scene played out in a discreet manner. Hayley was shown sleeping away in the arms of her loving husband, Roy. After the episode, information on several humanitarian helplines appeared on the screen to offer help to any who may have been disturbed by the scene. In the days that followed, Hayley’s death was widely re-screened and discussed throughout British mainstream media. The next peak in public interest in Coronation Street centred around an episode featuring Hayley’s funeral, which was bursting with emotion. Her coffin, brightly decorated