Together or Apart? Some questions raised by the broadcasting of funeral services during the Covid-19 pandemic

In January 2021 a thousand people watched a funeral Mass streamed live on University College Dublin’s YouTube channel: the funeral Mass of "Old man Belfield", an intensely private individual who lived on the campus of Ireland's largest university for over 30 years, rarely speaking to anyone. This piece takes this, and similar events, as a starting point to explore how new online media forms may impact the representation of social life while simultaneously affording new forms of social connections and disconnections. Although questions about the role of media platforms like YouTube in everyday life are not new – is YouTube the new television? (Ha, 2018) – Covid-19 has amplified their significance. Our focus is on Ireland, but we believe the issues raised here are of wider relevance.

As of June 2021, Covid-19 had taken nearly 5,000 lives in Ireland. As elsewhere, the pandemic has profoundly disrupted traditional patterns of mourning. Traditionally, Irish funerals or wakes are expressions of communal solidarity. Families, neighbours, and community members gather, sometimes over a couple of days, to share prayers and stories, sing songs, and comfort the family of the departed (Taylor, 1989). Media Organizations, including the RTE, the BBC and The Guardian have covered many of the challenges that COVID-19 has brought about to these traditional activities and rituals. International and national travel restrictions, in place over months, included not being able to travel further than 5KM (3.1 Miles). Even when travel was possible, funeral services were restricted to minimal numbers, with designated chairs spaced 2 meters apart. Across Ireland, communities have found alternative ways of attending a funeral and showing one's respects. In a rural village in West Kerry, people paid their tributes to an elderly community member by lining up a two-kilometre road while keeping two meters apart. Solutions of this kind helped to retain the sense of community and solidarity typical of Irish funerals (Ronan, 2020). Still, for many in the Irish diaspora, attending funerals remotely became the only option, even in the case of the ceremonies of close family members.

Representation of social life

Online funerals have also featured prominently within institutional settings — and in cases where gathering restrictions played a more significant role than limits of movement.

Virtual funerals raise questions about the re-presentation of social life in general. Some funeral Mass videos, like the one broadcast by University College Dublin, are still available online and can be watched and rewatched. Does this 'availability' have the power of transforming the significance of rituals such as funerals? Does this take away the communal dimension of such ceremonies?

Communicating about deaths: media's traditional and new ways

During COVID-19 various forms of media have played a fundamental role in communicating a person's death to the wider community. Media has traditionally been an important medium for letting the community know about someone's death. In Ireland, especially for the older generation, the daily reading of death notices is very important (Larkin, 2016), with some arguing that “the Irish have a unique fascination with death notices”. If knowing about and attending a neighbour's funeral is a communal duty, communicating someone's death is a way of respecting people's right to know so that they can play their part as members of that community.

But there is also something to say about how death is communicated in mass media. Print media traditionally uses short notices to communicate the death; a picture of the deceased would also be a way of keeping the memory of the dead alive. The use of social media and online channels to communicate about death, and indeed the funeral, has implications for how the community can engage in the collective and public form of mourning (Myers, 2016). The passing of Old man Belfield was communicated to the wider community using traditional media channels including 20 newspaper articles and an RTE Radio (Irish national radio) tribute read out by the university’s Director of Communication and Marketing. His death was also announced on social media channels, resulting in an outpour of tributes from all corners of the university's community. Online mourning may not allow for the physical gestures that offer consolation to one other. However, it allows mourning the dead as if they were alive: with a written message directly to them – not unlike speaking to them (Walter, 2015).

Connections and disconnections

The online broadcasting of funeral services offers the opportunity to ‘attend’ a re-presentation of a communal event. It affords connections where the disruption of social distancing has created a vacuum. Yet it cannot entirely do away with a sense of disconnection, the disconnection of physical distance. Here the question to be asked has to do not so much with the role of the media itself, but of those using it. It seems that, in the very process of trying to find connection, participants risk becoming a detached audience. These questions become even more relevant when, in the case of Old man Belfield’s funeral, ceremonies are not only broadcast but also kept online for anyone to watch (potentially over and over again) later. In part, this echoes changes in the university: the market view of students as consumers, the normalisation of recording lectures and creating digital content, as well as aspirations of ‘global’ reach. The traditional university place, which Old man Belfield was a part of, is disappearing as it gives way under neoliberal pressures, creating hyper-digital spaces.

At least since Durkheim (1912/2001), sociologists know about the importance of ritual and communal gatherings for social life. What happens to social life when mourners are not allowed to gather physically? Or when their only means to ‘attend’ a funeral is through the internet? It may be that different media forms can help people sustain a sense of community and solidarity, including in the religious domain (O’Brien, 2020). Still, as in many other domains, the pandemic calls for novel sociological thinking around media, communication, death, and community.

We offer our heartfelt condolences to the friends and family of Michael Byrne. He was a welcome part of our university life and will be missed.