Paper short abstract:

The distant transnational migrations of loved ones were often experienced as a kind of social death. In contrast, today's polymedia environments facilitate co-presence across distance. We propose the notion of 'digital kinning' as a way to examine care across distance, including for mortuary rites.

Paper long abstract:

Before the revolution in communication technologies, the distant transnational migrations of loved ones were often experienced as a kind of social death. The limited forms of transnational communication available and the prohibitive costs of travel meant that migrants and their 'left-behind' kin might be lost to each other forever. In communities where migration was a historically condoned practice of financial support and opportunity, emigrants were often memorialised in local monuments and places were reserved for them in familial cemetery plots, even if their bodies never returned. In contrast, today's polymedia environments create the conditions for synchronous, continuous, multisensory co-presence across distance that begin to challenge the normative and ontological privileging of proximity in care and kinship relations. This paper reports on preliminary findings from our current ARC project, Ageing and New Media, which examines the role of distant social support networks in the wellbeing of older people. We propose the notion of 'digital kinning' as a way to examine the practices of providing care and support across distance through the use of new media, including for death and mortuary rituals. For older people, these digital kinning practices often require facilitation by others, further emphasising their social relational nature. The concept of kinning (Howell 2013) highlights the processes of becoming kin, not on the basis of biological ties, but on the basis of what is done, performed and exchanged. The digital record created by this transnational digital kinning work enables relationships to extend beyond death through digital forms of memorialisation.