Sunday, February 19, 2017

Death and Grief in the Digital Age: Interview with Carla Sofka, Ph.D.

[Episode 109] Today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast is about Death and Grief in the Digital Age. I spoke with Dr. Carla Sofka, professor of Social Work at Siena College. Dr. Sofka has been studying and writing about the intersection of technology and death and grief since the earliest days of the world wide web. Her edited 2012 text, Dying, Death and Grief in an Online Universe, looks at how changes in communication technology have revolutionized the field of thanatology.

In today’s episode we talk about the role of social media in how, why, where and when, who we grieve. She shares stories of people whose loved ones have died, only to find out that because of social media they are the last to know. Carla provides some digital literacy around death and grief in the digital age. She talks about social media posts as death notifications, about establishing digital advance directives and thinking about our digital dust.

She talks about STUG reactions which are Sudden Temporary Upsurges of Grief. I had never heard of a STUG reaction, but I actually had one during our conversation. You’ll hear me talk about college friend of mine who died several years ago and during the interview start to tear up as I recalled getting a Facebook notification that it was her birthday.  We then talked about internet ghosts, memorial pages, memorial trolls, how and when people should respond to death notices online and what that means for the loved ones. She suggests that just as we provide sex education to kids, we should be providing death education.  She also recommends including technology assessment in the standard biopsychosocialspiritual assessment. We ended our conversation talking about resources for mental health professionals who want to learn more.

Download MP3 [34:14]




Bio 

Carla Sofka, Ph.D., MSW, is a Professor of Social Work at Siena College in Loudonville, NY.  In addition to teaching the introductory course in social welfare and social work, Dr. Sofka teaches research methods and social work practice courses.  She also teaches a Franciscan Concern Diversity course entitled Death, Diversity, and Pop Culture and has taught an online continuing education course on Death and Grief in the Digital Age. Dr. Sofka has conducted service learning projects in conjunction with the World Trade Center Exhibit at the New York State Museum and has studied how museums related to tragedy serve as healing spaces. Her current research focuses on how digital and social media resources are used to cope with illness, death, and grief.  Dr. Sofka currently serves as the co-chair of the Council on Social Work Education's Technology in Social Work Education and Practice Track and is a past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling.

Transcript

Introduction
Jonathan Singer: Hey there podcast listeners, Jonathan here. Today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast is about Death and Grief in the Digital Age. I want you to take a moment and think about the people you know who died in the past year. Were they friends, colleagues, or celebrities? How did you find out? Did their deaths rock your world? Did you find yourself in the throes of grief, unable to focus on the tasks at hand? Or, were they a moment in your day that went by almost unnoticed? I don’t know your friends and loved ones who died last year. But I am pretty sure we mourned some of the same celebrity deaths.

Prince, David Bowie, Carrie Fisher & Debbie Fisher, George Michael, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Elie Weisel, Nancy Reagan, Gene Wilder, Sir George Martin, Leonard Cohen… and the list goes on and on and on.

It seemed like every week on social media there was another breaking news item about a celebrity who died.  And I was wondering – is it just that I’m spending more time on social media, or are more celebrities dying? Apparently I’m not the only one who asked that question. A quick Google search found an article from the BBC on this very topic. In 2016 BBC news published more celebrity obituaries in than in any other year. Nearly half of those deaths happened in the first three months of 2016, and in the last two weeks of 2016 the BBC reported 9 celebrity deaths.

Now, for the scientists in the crowd I know that counting obituaries isn’t a rigorous empirical method for establishing death rates. But for the rest of us, it wasn’t just that 2016 had more celebrity deaths. It was that those bumps at the beginning and the end of the year that made it seem like they were coming fast and furious. And social media gave us a way to share about it and talk about it and grieve together in ways that never would have happened 20 years ago. Not only did I learn things I never knew about these celebrities, but I also learned things about my friends.  Social media made it possible for us to grieve and share together.

But enough about Ziggy Stardust, Prince, and Princess Leia. Let’s get back to you. If you had a loved one die last year, did you feel pressured by the current zeitgeist of “if it didn’t happen on social media it didn’t really happen?” How did you come to the decision to post or not to post? When you thought about the post, did you welcome the flood of condolences or did it make you want to run and hide?  There are so many questions about death and grief in the digital age. And that’s why I spoke with Dr. Carla Sofka, professor of Social Work at Siena College. Dr. Sofka has been studying and writing about the intersection of technology and death and grief since the earliest days of the world wide web. Her edited 2012 text, Dying, Death and Grief in an Online Universe, looks at how changes in communication technology have revolutionized the field of thanatology, which is a fancy word for the study of death. She has chapters about death education, thanatechnology, which is a fancy word for the intersection of technology and death studies, and how to build online communities of support – one of my favorite chapter titles is “In Cyberspace, There's No Such Thing as Disenfranchised Grief”.  

In today’s episode we talk about the role of social media in how, why, where and when, who we grieve. She shares stories of people whose loved ones have died, only to find out that because of social media they are the last to know. Carla provides some digital literacy around death and grief in the digital age: she talks about social media posts as death notifications, about establishing digital advance directives and thinking about our digital dust. She talks about STUG reactions which are Sudden Temporary Upsurges of Grief. I had never heard of a STUG reaction, but I actually had one during our conversation. You’ll hear me talk about college friend of mine who died several years ago and during the interview start to tear up as I recalled getting a Facebook notification that it was her birthday.  We then talked about internet ghosts, memorial pages, memorial trolls, how and when people should respond to death notices online and what that means for the loved ones. She suggests that just as we provide sex education to kids, we should be providing death education.  She also recommends including technology assessment in the standard biopsychosocialspiritual assessment. We ended our conversation talking about resources for mental health professionals who want to learn more. If you’re interested in other podcast episodes about death, I highly recommend starting with the list put together by Qeepr.com: http://www.qeepr.com/blog/best-podcast-episodes-about-death/.

Before we get to the episode, I want to give a shout out to Tierra Montgomery, college student transferring  into Mathematics at USC-Aiken, for generously donating the transcription of Episode 100 – Private Practice with Dr. Julie Hanks. If you want to support the podcast by donating a transcript, please send me an email. You can join the community of listeners on Twitter and Facebook.  We’re doing an audience survey and I would love to get your feedback. The link is on the top right of the Social Work Podcast website. And, if you love the podcast, please leave a review on iTunes.

And now, without further ado, on to episode 109 of the Social Work Podcast: Death and Grief in the Digital Age: Interview with Carla Sofka, Ph.D.


Interview

[00:7:58]
Jonathan Singer: Carla, thanks so much for being here on the social work podcast. So what's different about death and grief in the digital age?

Carla Sofka: Well I think death is able to come out of the closet. Even though hospice has been around for a long time there's still a lot of situations where people are very reluctant to talk about death; very reluctant to talk publicly about their grief because it's still very awkward and uncomfortable. And I'm not sure that awkwardness or discomfort is ever going to totally go away, but technology is certainly giving people different options to talk about it in ways that seem to be more comfortable.

[00:08:33]
Jonathan Singer: We are pretty uncomfortable talking about death, aren't we?

Carla Sofka: Well why should we be comfortable? Nobody wants to look forward to it. It's not something that we learn how to deal with. Unlike most things in school, it's rare for people to have a death class-- to have an opportunity to learn about death and grief unless they're thrown into it for some reason.

[00:08:58]
Jonathan Singer: And so what is it about technology that makes talking about death and grief different?

Carla Sofka: Well, I think technology you don't necessarily have to go online and talk about it unless you want to. So it gives you a choice. And I think the other thing that it does is it takes the pressure off. I hear people tell stories after they experienced a loss that sometimes they'll be walking in a public place, they'll see someone they know, the person they know sees them and they suddenly change direction or walk the other way or say "hey, how you doing?" Really don't want to know the answer and try to get out of that awkward and uncomfortable conversation.  But, if you're in an online environment, you go there by choice. You don't have the pressure of having to think quickly. You have time to carefully consider what you want to say. You can see what other people are doing and sometimes it’s easier to know what to say or do if you have something to model after. And you can also think about what you want to communicate before you have to say it --you can plan it out. There's also something very different about anonymity –and I know this comes up related to other topics but-- sometimes total strangers will go onto  a memorial site and will start to express their support or their condolences to someone they never met. And that's an absolutely fascinating phenomenon in and of itself. But to someone who knows about it and studies grief, it makes perfect sense because you go there by choice, you may have a very personal experience that you know what they're thinking, you know a little bit about what they're feeling and you know how awkward it is when other people don't know how to support you. So you're that person now who's the expert and it's very comfortable to go and let somebody know they're not alone. And that's what's happening online.

Jonathan Singer: So folks have the opportunity to voluntarily enter this discussion, to enter this space where death is being talked about. And they don't have to talk about it but they can still be in the space. Or they can be in the space, talk about it, but be anonymous. So it sounds like the digital age provides all these different levels and layers to talking about death that weren't around before the digital age.

Carla Sofka: Exactly, because you had to seek it out before.  And by seeking it out, that might mean consciously making a choice to go to a funeral home if you know someone who has lost a loved one. You go to the visitation, you go to the wake, and you can decide what you're going to say and do. You know, I remember back home in the olden days you'd walk into the funeral home and you'd be in the family line and people would awkwardly come up and hand you their hand. "You have my sympathy, you have my sympathy", and kind of just walk down the line saying that because that's all they knew what to do. But when you go into an online space, you can read what other people are saying you can get a sense of what might be comforting to someone. So in a way it's kind of an educational space but it's also a space for social support. So if you don't know what to do you can go there and learn.

[00:13:04]
Jonathan Singer: I'm thinking of the times where I've been on Facebook and I've seen somebody post saying something like, 'We said goodbye to my father today. He was a wonderful man.' Well I might know the person but I might not have had any idea that their dad was sick or had died suddenly and then suddenly I find myself in this situation of do I ignore the post? Do I click the like button? Which is just a terrible option. But then I do. I read below and it seems like the most common thing people say is "I'm so sorry for your loss," which seems like a modern day version of "you have my sympathies." So of all the things you could say about this, what recommendation would you have for folks when they see something like that and they want to provide support but aren't sure what to do?

Carla Sofka: Well I think now that Facebook got smart and gave us other options that helps. I wish they put a hug button on there because just letting someone know you're thinking about them is really all you need to say and it's perfectly okay to think about that. I often will just say, "keeping you in my thoughts" and if the person is a spiritual or religious person and you might share that, you might say "keeping you in my thoughts and prayers" or "thinking of you during this time as you say goodbye to your dad." It really doesn't have to be lengthy and I'm not sure in that immediate first couple days or hours after a death how much people are going online. But when things calm down for them and they're feeling alone, they  might go online and if they see 75 people who clicked a button—even if it's that like button that's kind of weird—they know you were thinking about them. And that's going to mean something to them. So even if you just go in and indicate that you were there that's going to make a big difference for them.

[00:14: 12]
Jonathan Singer: So when I read about somebody's death online, does that qualify as a death notification?

Carla Sofka: Absolutely, it does. The trick is whether or not it's happening in the way that would be most comfortable for you. And that's going to depend on a lot of things. That's going to depend on where you are at the time you read it. Are you in the privacy of your own home? So that if you humanly react with tears, or you're very upset ,that you're not worried about who is witnessing that very normal reaction. The other piece is how you're related to the person who died. Should you be finding out on social media? Or should that be communicated in a much more personal way?

[00:15:09]
Jonathan Singer: So you're saying that and I'm thinking, you know for most of the ones that I've read --and you know, I'm in my mid 40s so there's more death than when I was younger-- but now that you mention that there were a couple of times I was thinking it just happened, I wonder if people are finding out via social media, like if everybody is just finding out.

Carla Sofka: Well it's interesting because you wonder what do you do with information when you get it. And in the olden days, when I was a kid in the stone age, my parents had one phone on the wall. So when somebody called with bad news, odds were my parents were going to be in control of that information and they could decide when they would sit my brother down and I and tell us what had happened. But now you can get this information in an instant. You can put it out for the whole world to see. The tricky part is would you want to find out that way? And if it's happening very quickly after the tragedy-- I remember a situation in my community. There was a car crash involving four high school students, and in the time that it took for one of the kid's mother to get to the hospital there were already thirty people who weren't related to him who had gotten down to the waiting room and were there because of information shared that was shared on social media about the crash. What did the car look like? The students were texting each other, and the people they couldn't get a hold of—the four students—travelled together. And when their friends put it together, 'OK, I can't get a hold of this one', 'I can't get a hold of this one' they figured out they couldn't get a hold of the four that they knew had just gone to a basketball game together. They knew who was in the car. And so when one of the young men's mother had gotten to the hospital his football coach was already there before, she was able to get there. So the chaplain sat her down and delivered the unfortunate news that her son had died, and the next thing out of her mouth was "do you have other children who aren't at home? How fast can you get a hold of him so that he doesn't find out his brother died on twitter?" And so I think you really have to carefully consider is the information that you have accurate? Because kids in the community were really distressed that information was going around wasn’t true. They were getting upset about things they hadn’t verified. So that makes it difficult. And then are there people who really should not be finding out on social media? There hasn’t been time to properly get in touch with them and tell them in a way they deserve to learn this horrible news. So, I think you have to be careful about how impulsively you share what you learn.

[00:17:50]
Jonathan Singer: I can imagine that in addition to the—just the overwhelming grief of having just lost a son—that the mom also had feelings about other people knowing first, and sort of the waiting room being full, and sort of having to negotiate these other things.

Carla Sofka: Well part of that, too, is when you’re given the worst news of your life you need to be able to  just focus on your own reaction. And sometimes people feel obligated to take care of other people if they just happen to be there. And unfortunately she had no control over who she invited into that story or not. Social media took care of that for her. And when you’re dealing with grief, control is a really important thing and to take that from someone else is a challenge.

[00:19:03]
Jonathan Singer: So I know that teenagers communicate through social media. You know there can be a thousand communications in a single waking day, but we’re not in those spaces as adults, right? I mean I’m not snapchatting with 13 year-olds—thank goodness right? And so how do you honor and acknowledge how teenagers are communicating with each other—sort of honor that if they are afraid that one of their friends is dead that they also have needs? And yet manage this idea of snapchat as the largest PA system, you know, the universe has ever seen?

Carla Sofka: Well that’s a really interesting dilemma, because I’m a big believer in allowing people to grieve in the way that they need to grieve. And there are clearly generational differences related to that. I think the important thing is to help each other communicate. What do you need? And so all of us dinosaurs out there who are learning about the power of social media, we need to respect that you’re exactly right: that is their world; that is their way of talking. And sometimes I think it’s easier for kids to talk with their fingers than to talk with their voice. And so, what’s wrong? Are they hurting anything by doing that? I think we need to respect that. The other piece though is to teach them about the consequences of their actions. So if learning about loss if new, if learning about how to cope with tragedy is new, you teach them what you can, but you also give them the chance to teach you about what they need. So just having those good old-fashioned sit-downs without the texting is helpful, but then letting them text if that’s the way they need to cope.

[00:20:30]
Jonathan Singer: So are you suggesting that one of the things that we should do as parents, as educators, is to have conversations with kids, middle school, high school, maybe even younger, about like think twice before you text out that you think someone’s dead? Is that what you’re saying?

Carla Sofka: Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying. Well and you know back, as long as there has been recorded history, there have been books about etiquette.  Now we just call it something else we call it “netiquette.” And so when you’re teaching your kids manners you sit them down and you try to educate them about this stuff. This is no different it’s just an unusual topic. So first the adults have to get comfortable having conversations with their kids about death. Then they have to invite their kids to teach them about how they use technology to cope. And just help them think’ well, how would you feel if this happened?’ And just try and raise their awareness about how somebody else might react very differently to something that they are perfectly comfortable with. I just finished writing about suggestions for ok, how do you have these conversations? So maybe it’s part of digital literacy and maybe schools need to bring people in who are familiar with this and have workshops with PTA that educate the parents about how kids are using social media and educate the kids about what happens if someone your age dies. Because sadly that’s happening more and more as people get younger and younger by the time they come to me at my Death and Dying class at the campus they already know people who died in accidents, they know friends who have committed suicide.  They’re getting introduced to this whether we like it or not. So introducing comfortable ways when they don’t need to learn. To educate them, it’s just like sex education but it’s death ed instead.

[00:22:37]
Jonathan Singer: So, it’s so interesting to think about having, sort of, death ed classes for students. But I know that because of my research and involvement with suicide prevention and youth, that there’s also a role that schools play in responding to death. Not just suicide death, but how they use social media and how they communicate with folks. Do you have any advice about that?

Carla Sofka: Well, I think the first thing that I’ve learned from the people who’ve lived with this have educated me is that they the first need to talk to the families and to find out what kind of information they’re comfortable having put on a public space. So, to maybe  identify a liaison who’s going to reach out to the families as soon as possible and just make sure that they’re not doing anything that’s uncomfortable for the families because I don’t think anyone would want to do that. I think the other thing websites, social media is a great way to relay practical information. A lot of people find it very helpful to give information about the memorial services, or funerals, visitations. Any kind of way that they can communicate that without someone having to make a million phone calls, because that’s one of the beauties of social media: it gets information out very, very quickly. I think the other thing is if they want to give practical support and help, there are wonderful websites now called mealtrain.com where you can coordinate casserole brigades. So there are very practical resources out there to help. I think the other thing though is to think about how are they going to help their students use social media responsibly. So doing trainings and just having it be a part of digital literacy in the school is such a normal thing to do. Having staff who are familiar with these things and are educated about social media and how to use it wisely is also I think a part of administrator training and teacher training that I’m not sure if colleges for those professionals have caught up, but there’s a lot that they can do to be proactive: having social media policies that have thought out how they’re going to use those resources during times of sudden death or tragedy is very important too.

[00:25:08]
Jonathan Singer: And I know with technology changing and social media changing i that it can be tough to keep up with that. A woman I went to college with died, she had MS, and I remember the first year after she died I got a notice from facebook, “Wish Amy a Happy Birthday!” And I thought ‘oooh’ and so I went to her page and what I saw was beautiful: there were all these people that had said you know --I’m tearing up here--  like “Amy, we miss you.” you know and “Happy Birthday!” and “I hope you’re having a good time wherever you are.”

Carla Sofka:  Well, it’s interesting because facebook did develop a policy, they call it a “legacy contact.” So that you have the ability to anticipate what might happen to your social media in the event of your death. So if you want to appoint someone who you then give basically control over your facebook and educate them about what you’d want. Because there are both pros and cons to doing  what they call “memorializing” a page and what that does is it prevents people from interacting with the site in same way. So you don’t have as much freedom to have the kind of dialogues and conversations. And some families have told me they absolutely love when people go on and share stories or share pictures because they sometimes learn things about their loved one that they did not know. On the other hand, sometimes people will post things that aren't helpful, for example the story of a mom who had consciously chosen not to go to the cemetery yet to see the headstone on her son’s grave. and a well meaning friend posted a picture on the page and when you just go on you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to see and so she happened to see that page while she was at work . She did not want to see the picture. So again, thinking very carefully about what you post. Is it going to be helpful? Or could it potentially be interpreted in a way you do not intend? Because I know that person did not have bad intentions, it just wasn’t what the family needed. So trying to think about how it’s going to impact folks, but also being kind of prepared for the possibility that things are going to catch you off guard. And there’s actually a clinical term for that, it’s called the “STUG Reaction.” Which is a Subsequent Temporary Upsurge of Grief, where you have a trigger that you may be able to predict: like a birthday, or a holiday, or a special date that you shared when you’re naturally going to be thinking about someone. And there’s actually a term for that it’s called an “internet ghost,” when you get a prompt from someone’s page that is just sent out because it hasn’t been memorialized. And those things you can smile but sometimes you can also shed a tear it just kind of depends on where you’re at in the process of coping with loss. So I guess thinking very carefully about what opportunities that takes away and what things it might prevent if you memorialize a page. Because there are also horrible things that happen on these pages, memorial trolls sometimes will seek out memorial sites and kind of look for strangers who are posting and just harangue, or just be absolutely nasty about things. And it’s fascinating, there’s a study actually that interviewed trolls to understand why they do what they do and they basically said that they don’t feel it’s appropriate for someone who didn’t know the deceased to go on and post. And I think actually that’s kind of shortsighted, because what I’ve learned from the total strangers who’ve posted on memorial pages is that if a case is publicized in the media, even if they didn’t know the person who died, even if they don’t know the family members, they typically have had a very personal loss that is almost identical to the one that the griever is experiencing and they know what it feels like to be unsupported, they know how hard it is for people to know what it is to say. There’s a term called “emotional rubbernecking” to describe when a total stranger goes online to describe this. And when I read the article I had a pretty strong negative reaction, because as a clinician I could think of all kinds of reasons why a total stranger would go on. And so I’d like to call it “experiential empathy” because they have the ability to relate to what a person is experiencing and they want to go on and be supportive because they know how helpful that support was for them, and they want to give something back. And so it’s just absolutely fascinating how you can have two people react on the totally opposite side of the fence to this same thing.

[00:29:34]
Jonathan Singer: So do you have any tips or advice for helping professionals?

Carl Sofka: Well I think the most important thing to do is to work it into your assessment process. You think about social support; this is digital social support. So how can you weave in questions? Do people use social media? Have they used it after a tragedy or in coping with a death? What types of social media do they use? What have their experiences been? Because they will tell you if they’ve had good experiences. They will tell you if they’ve had unfortunate experiences. And then you’re going to learn more about the pros and cons of these kinds of things. So weave it into your social history assessment. You should always do a loss history assessment anyway. The other thing is to if you’re not a tech person you got to dive in, and you just go on learn about these things firsthand because that is the best teacher other than your clients. And then I think the other thing, we’ve mentioned a couple of pros and cons already that twitter and facebook and other social networking sites are a great way to get information out quickly, but you lose control of that information. So make very  wise choices about the timing and what you post on social media. I think the other thing to think about is that if people aren't savvy users of technology, they might not be aware that bad things can happen. So being familiar with the phenomenon of trolling because sometimes it’s smart to have a liaison for the family monitor social media. So that if they’re in the thick of coping with a loss, have somebody else be responsible for what’s happening on those pages. So that they don’t have to be hypervigilant about monitoring what’s going on. And give somebody administrative privileges so if there is a comment that shouldn't be up there they can take it down or they can block a user if somebody is causing problems. So being familiar with the administrative workings. I think the other thing if you are a hospice social worker, you do advanced directives for health care. There is now a whole body of literature evolving about digital advanced directives and doing planning for your digital dust. So thinking about what you want to have happen to your own technology in the event something happens to you. And appointing somebody, writing down your passwords, putting them in a safe place, so that if somebody needs to get access to your stuff they can. Then you don't have to go fight with twitter or facebook or any of those other places to get access to a loved one’s social media. I think the other thing is that sometimes people use blogging as a therapeutic tool. And one of the women who lost her son talked about how blogging was incredibly helpful for her. And so she started writing quite frequently and thousands of people started following her blog. And it was very poignant, because it created this incredible community of support where people are posting comments in reaction to her blog. They’re actually sharing information about their loss. So it turned into a community site for grieving. But then, the fascinating thing for me, as time passed it didn’t come so naturally what she wanted to write about. She had to think really hard and so she made the decision that she was going to stop writing. And then she started feeling guilty because all these people are saying “when are you going to write again?” and she  didn’t realize that people had become dependent on her as a source of their own support. And that was really awkward for her. So anticipating unanticipated consequences is a tricky to suggest people do. But if you become familiar with how social media is used, these things just become very, very obvious.

Jonathan Singer: Thank you so much for sharing your expertise about death and grief and dying in the digital age and for making me cry and I really appreciate you taking the time.

Carla Sofka: It’s been my privilege to share what I’ve learned with others. Thanks so much.

Transcript generously donated by Ferd Palumbo, MSW, LSW, Clinician at the YWCA of Bergen County HealingSPACE in Hackensack, New Jersey. Twitter: @PalumboFC

References & Resources

  1. Sofka, C. (2017). Digital survivor advocacy: Fighting so you may never know tragedy.  In S.E. Elswick (Ed.), Data Collection:  Methods, ethical issues, and future directions (pp. 111-145). Hauppauge, NY:  Nova Science Publishers.
  2. Sofka, C. (2017). Role of digital and social media in supporting bereaved students. In J. Brown & S. Jimerson (Eds.), Supporting Bereaved Students at School (pp. 96-111). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  3. Sofka, C., Gibson, A., & Silberman, D. (in press).  Digital immortality or digital death Contemplating digital end of life planning.  In M.H. Jacobsen (Ed.), Postmortal SocietyAldershot, UK: Ashgate/Routledge.
  4. Sofka, C. (2015, October 21). Using Digital and Social Media in your Work with the Dying and Bereaved. Webinar presented for the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Information about the webinar recording is available at: http://www.adec.org/adec/Main/Continuing_Education/Webinars/Webinar_Details/ADEC_Main/Continuing-Education/We/ Webinar_Details_Folder/Webinar_Details.aspx?webinar=WEB1015 
  5. Sofka, C. (2014).  Adolescents’ use of technology and social media to cope with grief.  In K. Doka & Tucci, A.S. (Eds.), Living with Grief:  Helping Adolescents Cope with Loss (pp. 205-228). Washington, DC: Hospice Foundation of America.
  6. Sofka, C.J., Noppe Cupit, I. & Gilbert, K. (2012). Dying, Death and Grief in an Online Universe:  For Counselors and Educators.  NY:  Springer.
  7. Sofka, C.J. (1997).  Social support "internetworks", caskets for sale, and more:  Thanatology and the information superhighway.  Death Studies, 21, 553-574.





APA (6th ed) citation for this podcast:

Singer, J. B. (Producer). (2017, February 19). #109 - Death and Grief in the Digital Age: Interview with Carla Sofka, Ph.D. [Audio Podcast]. Social Work Podcast. Retrieved from http://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2017/02/digital-death.html

No comments: