Saturday, April 19, 2008

Is this the future of tributes?

As part of my journalism course here at UCLan we have to produce a 10-page newspaper and one of the stories we were working on this week was the death of five British women when their bus crashed in Ecuador.
One of these, was Rebecca Logie, was from Chorley which was part of our papers so-called reach so we felt obliged to cover it even though are assessed paper is not circulated and only comes out weekly.
At first we were struggling to find sources which wouldn't matter to us as we could wait and re-write other sources due to our deadline on Friday but one opportunistic student typed Becci (as she was known to her friends) logie into facebook and of course there she was.
The facebook profile of a dead person (find it yourself if you need to...I'm not posting any link). Scary thing is it was still being updated, we guessed by someone who knew her account details, there is now a group in rememberance for her and so many wall posts and photos to remember her it is a great tribute.
Or at least that was what some people thought.
Others in our class (me, as well to an extent) wondered how long would it be before they take it down? Will they take it down and who...facebook or her family?
That developed into a big discussion - obviously put into context a profile on the internet is the last thing you think about when you've lost a member of your family- but everyone can get a glimpse into the world of Rebecca Logie. This girl was not ignorant of this as she also kept a blog- pretty good one as well-of her travels.
Some of the wall posts are pretty emotional stuff and the group is nearing 800 members but something about this just niggles me.
Personally, I wouldn't want everyone being able to see a profile of myself on a website - Ok, thats not my choice, but something just doesn't feel quite right about it all.
Some of the other women that died have accounts but you need to be in their network to access them.
I think what gets to me is this new way of leaving tributes and me a total stranger who never knew anyone related to the girl being able to get an insight into her life. I guess we have to work out whether that is a good or bad thing.
It is good people can pay their tributes and post a message online but their comes a time, albeit no-one knows when, that people move on and lives carry on. So what will happen then, will it be a permanent memorial to her or will it be taken down after people have paid their respects - I guess we'll just have to wait and see but sites like Facebook bring up this problem which, until recently, was not an issue.
I think it seriously needs to be looked at because, maybe I am being naive, but I would not want people I never knew finding out about me and its almost voyeurism - I can't really put my finger on it but it just doesn't feel right.
Any comments on this issue might make me consider the issue more but at the moment there is just something voyeuristic, albeit in a respectful way, about looking at someone's online account who are no longer with us.

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