Responsibility Beyond the Grave: Technological Mediation of Collective Moral Agency in Online Commemorative Environments

Online platforms of donations in memoriam are technologies of commemoration that mediate a responsible mode of being in the world. They construct death as empowering for the deceased, and they open up new opportunities for collaborative action to emerge. By relying on existing conceptualizations of post-mortem personhood and technologically mediated agency, this article considers the socio-technical construction of the commemorative platform, MuchLoved, an online tribute charity; it focuses on its interaction design for online donations in memoriam. Through specific design options, MuchLoved stirs a distinctive form of distributed agency with a collective and moral character. This accomplishment of collective moral agency through technological mediations might redefine the space of symbolic immortality and change the human condition in relation with death.