viz.

Following up on my post from yesterday, where I pointed out that Facebook originated as a way to display and comment on photos, Facebook has been a nexus of information about victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. The descriptions of 7 of the 15 victims listed on this page on NPR’s website contain references to Facebook memorial pages or have pictures that were acquired from Facebook accounts.

Facebook users have also generated a number of online memorials. Consider these images that I grabbed from the “Longhorns Commemorating the Virginia Tech Shooting” (requires login) group’s page:

source: Facebook Homepage for the Facebook group “Longhorns Commemorating the Virginia Tech Shooting”

source: Facebook All images for the Facebook group “Longhorns Commemorating the Virginia Tech Shooting”

It is interesting that, along with commemorative images, group members included a photo of the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, and an image of the police storming one of the buildings on campus. While on the one hand the use of Facebook to post visual responses to the tragedy—in this case, a number of images associating the VT logo and the University of Texas logo—as well as comments associated with those visuals functions simply as remembrance, on the other, the images that users have chosen indicate a complicated response to the tragedy. Consider how out of place Seung-Hui’s image would be at a funeral for one of the victims, or a memorial service.

I think there are at least two possible reasons why these images were posted in this way. First, they are informative. The culture of Facebook is also the culture of the Internet, and one purpose of these memorial sites, like websites in general, is to provide information—about the victims, about memorial services, and about the shooter. Second, since commenting on images is a primary activity of Facebook users, I believe that once the shock of the event has worn off a bit, these images will be a place for people to post comments—reactions to the tragedy—just as the Facebook and MySpace pages of the victims will be ways for for friends and family to memorialize them.