Producing the deceased
Résumé
This article gives an account of the way in which an emotional work can be carried out on the occasion of the death of a user or a user on Facebook, through the writing practices that take place on the profile pages of deceased persons. and on “group” commemorative pages created after the death. The objective is first, by an analysis of the general conditions of use of this social networking site, of the writing tools, and of the publications which take place on 44 profile pages relating to 42 people who died immediately after their death. , to identify the acts of establishment of other possible modes of existence for the deceased on Facebook. The objective is then, by the analysis of all the writing practices which are deployed on these pages after the death, of seven interviews and a floating observation of the phenomenon, to understand how the “emotional communities” are. constitute around the “production” of the deceased without however being free from conflictuality. The objective is finally, by comparing these writing practices with those which are deployed on 34 “group” pages with commemorative purposes referring to one or other of these 42 deceased persons, to bring to light the the way in which Facebook makes possible the production of the dead or deceased "metonymic", that is to say representing all the deceased persons in a similar way, as well as the enlargement of the emotional communities of these persons, and with what consequences.