An assessment of bereaved supporters' expectations and experiences of giving via digital memorial sites

该项目旨在通过慈善机构探索数字内容的创作，作为一种纪念实践。它将回答以下问题：1。为什么失去亲人的人会通过创建在线纪念来向慈善机构捐款，以纪念已故的人？在他们的实际经历中，他们对这个仪式的期望是如何实现的？慈善机构在提供这项服务方面的角色和经验是什么？为了满足失去亲人的支持者的需要，他们的做法需要如何改变？在英国，纪念捐赠的价值约为22亿英镑，并以每年2.5%的速度稳步增长。这种捐赠的数字形式——例如通过一次性现金捐赠或点对点筹款来创建数字纪念馆——在疫情期间加速发展。这种丧亲仪式似乎会继续下去，但目前人们对网上悼念捐赠知之甚少，无论是对丧亲者的体验，从这些网站获得的好处，还是慈善机构对这些网站的管理。关于纪念捐赠如何帮助失去亲人的人，人们提出了各种各样的假设。这些方法包括：通过将死者定位在（正在进行的）世界中，通过与死者保持关系和沟通，以及通过为死者创造一种“象征性不朽”的感觉。到目前为止，还没有对这些假设进行系统的审查，而且即使有，也很少有现有的研究与失去亲人的人交谈，以了解他们的经历。在寻找经验证据来批评这些假设的过程中，这项博士研究将为死亡研究、慈善实践和数字化转型领域做出新的贡献，因为它首次捕捉了丧亲网络捐赠者的声音、价值观和观点。就影响和现实效用而言，该项目将为慈善机构提供有关为丧亲者开发和管理数字网站的实用指南和标准。该项目的创新方法将使效用最大化。这个项目很可能是慈善募捐者和学术研究者之间的第一次共同创作合作。咨询委员会由来自广泛慈善机构（根据事业、规模和地区）的纪念筹款人组成，将指导项目的每个阶段，包括支持面试参与者的招募，制定半结构化面试的对话指南，审查主题分析的早期发现，并批评最佳实践指南，以确保它们适用于慈善机构。通过参与方式，该项目将增加慈善机构对其做法进行必要改变的支持，从而最大限度地为使用数字纪念网站的丧亲人士带来利益。此外，该项目将进一步在社会政策和实践的学术研究中使用数字工具。所有的半结构化面试都将在网上进行。这些访谈还将包括数字人种学的元素，因为参与者将被邀请重新审视创建数字纪念馆的过程，以便在创作过程中更好地理解他们的行为和情绪。在参与者知情同意的情况下，所有访谈都将被记录下来，并将关键主题的汇编视频嵌入论文中，以确保研究结果对慈善筹款者最大限度地可访问和影响。这将进一步增加做出改变的可能性，以改善失去亲人的慈善支持者的体验。

This project aims to explore the creation of digital content via charities as a memorialising practice. It will answer the following questions:1. Why do bereaved people give to charities in remembrance of a deceased person by creating an online memorial?2. How were their expectations of this ritual fulfilled or disappointed in their actual experience?3. What is the role and experience of charities in providing this service, and how might practise need to change to meet the needs of bereaved supporters? In-memoriam giving in the UK is valued at approximately £2.2 billion, and it is growing steadily at 2.5% per annum. Digital forms of such giving - such as creating digital memorials by making one-off cash donations or peer-to-peer fundraising - accelerated during the pandemic.This bereavement ritual seems set to stay, but currently very little is known about in-memoriam giving online, in terms of the experience for bereaved people, the benefit derived from such sites, and the management of the sites by charities. Various hypotheses as to how in-memoriam giving might aid bereaved people have been proposed. These include: by locating the deceased person in the (ongoing) world, by continuing relationships and communication with the deceased and by creating a sense of 'symbolic immortality' for the deceased person. To date, there has been no systematic review of these hypotheses and little, if any, of the existing research has spoken to bereaved people to understand their experiences.In seeking empirical evidence to critique these hypotheses, this PhD study will make a novel contribution to the field of death studies, charity practice, and digital transformation as it captures the voices, values and views of bereaved online donors for the first time. In terms of impact and real-world utility, this project will provide charities with practical guidelines and standards about the development and management of digital sites for bereaved people. Utility will be maximised by the innovative methodology of this project.This project is in all likelihood the first co-creative collaboration between charity fundraisers and an academic researcher. An advisory board, made up of in-memoriam fundraisers from a wide range of charities (in terms of cause, size and region), will guide every stage of the project, including supporting the recruitment of interview participants, shaping the conversation guide for the semi-structured interviews, reviewing early findings from the thematic analysis and critiquing the best practice guidelines to ensure they are applicable to charities. By taking a participatory approach, this project will increase charity buy-in to implementing necessary changes to their practise, thereby maximising benefit to bereaved people using digital memorial websites. Additionally, this project will further the usage of digital tools within academic research into social policy and practise. All the semi-structured interviews will be conducted online. These interviews will also include an element of digital ethnography, as participants will be invited to revisit the process of creating a digital memorial enabling increased understanding of their behaviours and emotions during the creative process. All interviews, with the informed consent of participants, will be recorded and compilation videos of key themes will be embedded into the thesis to ensure the research findings are maximally accessible and impactful for charity fundraisers. This will further increase the likelihood that changes are made to improve the experience of bereaved charity supporters.