The long farewell: Mediated posthumous communications and identity persistence on vloggers’ memorialized accounts

Posthumous communication and parasocial relationships can go beyond the moment of death and continue for a longer period over thanatechnology. In this study, we combined topic modeling with qualitative textual analysis to examine discursive communicative behaviors on the memorialized accounts of two deceased Chinese vloggers on Bilibili. We identified two types of posthumous communication: life-to-death communication and death-triggered discussion. These communications are based on the remaining content and the perceived presence of living others on the accounts. Through posthumous communications, the deceased vloggers’ identities were preserved on one hand and were made symbols of related social topics on the other hand. As such, memorialized accounts serve as sites of collective memories and commemoration, which can be reactivated to facilitate ongoing posthumous communication when living people face similar situations or when related incidents resurface in society.