Postmortem memory of public figures in news and social media

Deceased public figures are often said to live on in collective memory. We quantify this phenomenon by tracking mentions of 2,362 public figures in English-language online news and social media (Twitter) 1 y before and after death. We measure the sharp spike and rapid decay of attention following de...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2021-09, Vol.118 (38)
Main Authors:	West, Robert, Leskovec, Jure, Potts, Christopher
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Artists Autopsy Clustering Collective memory Communication Cultural heritage Death Digital media Humans Mass Gatherings Mass Media - trends Memory Mortality News Physical Sciences Regression analysis Social Identification Social Media - trends Social networks Social Sciences Sociological Factors
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Deceased public figures are often said to live on in collective memory. We quantify this phenomenon by tracking mentions of 2,362 public figures in English-language online news and social media (Twitter) 1 y before and after death. We measure the sharp spike and rapid decay of attention following death and model collective memory as a composition of communicative and cultural memory. Clustering reveals four patterns of postmortem memory, and regression analysis shows that boosts in media attention are largest for premortem popular anglophones who died a young, unnatural death; that long-term boosts are smallest for leaders and largest for artists; and that, while both the news and Twitter are triggered by young and unnatural deaths, the news additionally curates collective memory when old persons or leaders die. Overall, we illuminate the age-old question of who is remembered by society, and the distinct roles of news and social media in collective memory formation.
ISSN:	0027-8424 1091-6490