School of Computer and Communication Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland;
Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Sep 21;118(38). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2106152118.
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.
人们常说，已故公众人物会活在集体记忆中。我们通过追踪 2362 位已故公众人物在英语新闻和社交媒体（推特）上的信息，量化了这一现象。我们记录了在死亡前后 1 年中，人们对这些公众人物的关注度的急剧上升和迅速衰减，并将集体记忆建模为交际记忆和文化记忆的组合。聚类分析揭示了四种死后记忆模式，回归分析表明，对于生前广受欢迎的、非正常死亡的年轻英语母语者，媒体关注度的提升最大；而对于领导人，长期的关注度提升最小；而且，虽然新闻和推特都会因年轻人和非自然死亡而被触发，但新闻在老年人或领导人去世时还会对集体记忆进行编辑。总的来说，我们阐明了社会会记住谁这个古老的问题，以及新闻和社交媒体在集体记忆形成中的不同作用。
