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

该项目旨在探索通过慈善机构创建数字内容作为纪念实践。它将回答以下问题：1。为什么失去亲人的人通过创建在线纪念馆来纪念死者？2.在他们的实际经历中，他们对这一仪式的期望是如何实现的？3.慈善机构在提供这项服务方面的作用和经验是什么？如何改变做法以满足丧亲支持者的需求？英国的纪念捐赠价值约为22亿英镑，并以每年2.5%的速度稳步增长。这种数字形式的捐赠--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。这种丧亲仪式似乎将继续存在，但目前人们对在线纪念捐赠知之甚少，包括丧亲者的体验、从此类网站获得的收益以及慈善机构对网站的管理。关于纪念性捐赠如何帮助失去亲人的人，人们提出了各种各样的假设。其中包括：通过在（持续的）世界中定位死者，通过与死者的持续关系和交流，以及通过为死者创造一种“象征性不朽”的感觉。迄今为止，还没有对这些假设进行系统的回顾，现有的研究也几乎没有与丧亲者交谈，以了解他们的经历。在寻求经验证据来批判这些假设的过程中，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者在线捐赠者的声音，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。这个项目的创新方法将使效用最大化。这个项目很可能是慈善筹款人和学术研究人员之间的第一次共同创造性合作。一个由来自各种慈善机构的纪念筹款人组成的咨询委员会（在事业，规模和地区方面）将指导项目的每个阶段，包括支持面试参与者的招募，为半结构化面试制定谈话指南，审查主题分析的早期结果，并批评最佳实践指南，以确保它们适用于慈善机构。通过采取参与性的方法，该项目将增加慈善机构对实施必要的实践变革的支持，从而使使用数字纪念网站的丧亲者受益最大化。此外，该项目还将在社会政策和实践的学术研究中进一步使用数字化工具。所有半结构化面试将在网上进行。这些访谈还将包括数字民族志的元素，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多地了解他们的行为和情感。所有的采访，与参与者的知情同意，将被记录和关键主题的编译视频将嵌入到论文，以确保研究结果是最大限度地访问和影响慈善筹款。这将进一步增加做出改变以改善丧亲慈善支持者体验的可能性。

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.