Virtual Practices of Memorialization in Social Media (Based on «Vkontakte»)

Subject of the present qualification paper is dissemination of memorialization practices into the medium of social networks, as shown on example of "Vkontakte" network. The work reviews historical transformation of funeral-memorial rituality in Russian Federation and particularities of implementation of this rituality in the web medium. The central point of the present research is a study of a social network account page of a deceased user completed with analysis of mournful posts left by other users of a network, as well as their respective accounts. The author developed a comprehensive screening system, based on principles of the machine learning with tutor, designed for search for accounts of deceased social networks users. Automatic web content screening for relevant mournful entries has been run for the purposes of research, along with analysis of collected data by means of tutor-less machine learning algorithm. The present research, aimed at studying of memorialization practices in social network medium, is pioneering in Russian Federation, so the comparison was conducted with relevant foreign researches. Author makes an analysis of both positive and negative traits of public web memorialization, as well as analyses of similarities with traditional funeral-memorial rituality. The author also provides analysis of motivation behind public mourning by social network users in the web.