While traditional Irish mourning rituals remain strongly established, technology now plays an important and accepted role, research from University College Cork has found.
The study, ‘How Digital Tools Shaped Irish Mourning Experiences Amidst Covid-19’, found that people perceived live-streamed funerals to be challenging and deeply unfulfilling during the pandemic restrictions.
But researchers also found that there is growing recognition of the established role that live-streaming and the use of online condolences, such as on RIP.ie, now have in the social dimension of mourning in Ireland.
Participants in the study acknowledged the importance and utility of digitally-mediated experiences, especially as people have become used to these technologies and what they can be used for.
The report found that following the lifting of Covid restrictions, there was consensus in favour of the continued, sensitive integration of digital mourning tools into established mourning practices.
“Digital tools and systems are expected to remain part of mourning practices in the foreseeable future,” said Professor Luigina Ciolfi, Professor of Human Computer Interaction at UCC School of Applied Psychology.
“There is important work to be done to integrate digital and in-person experiences in sensitive ways, for example thinking of mourners who are abroad or unable to participate in person and only have limited ways to share their own grief and their support.”
“It is also important to consider the privacy and safety of data and of interactions in online mourning, and the implications of using commercial platforms for these activities,” Prof Ciolfi said.
The report concludes that the experience of technology surrounding mourning is complex and still evolving, and that further human-computer interaction research is needed to address the issue.
