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This brief article aims to draw the attention of nonreligion researchers to a growing interdisciplinary research field: the study of death online. In digitally networked societies, the dead are remembered online, and their survivors can use digital resources to express grief, find support and construct memorials. New norms and languages of mourning are emerging, including new references to heaven, angels and communication with the dead. The boundary between religion and nonreligion is blurred in these new practices, but we know very little as yet about what this blurring actually means to the bereaved. This article will outline the main approaches to religion in studies of death online, draw on nonreligion research to critique these approaches, and call for new directions and methods in future studies of nonreligion and media. It will argue that scholars of religion and nonreligion have much to offer to the study of death online, and this article acts as an introduction and an invitation to future interdisciplinary exploration.

This article explores the use of online video as a medium for spiritual autobiography through a case study of the Christian movement I am Second (IaS). IaS has published 74 short films, focused primarily on evangelical Christian celebrities. In each case, the video subject overcomes struggles or achieves fulfillment only by surrendering their lives to God and becoming 'Second'. These stories are shared through fan blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and offline study groups. Analysis of the design, circulation, and response to these films indicates that digital media are fostering significant shifts in the production and reception of religious storytelling.

This chapter presents the study of death online should be cultivated as a valuable interdisciplinary research field, using death and mourning to improve human understanding of digital media, using online communication as a source of insight into experiences of dying and grieving. It examines the changes in the experience and practice of dying and mourning that are being brought about by the integration of digital media into everyday life. The chapter discusses the intense online communication that followed the death of Michael Jackson, addresses three key areas: online memorials, social network sites and online communities. The online memorials are dedicated pages, created within virtual cemeteries or as stand-alone websites. Researchers interested in death can analyse the vast numbers of personal responses posted to different online platforms, or study the impact of a death within an online community where almost every interaction is archived and available to view.

The present study integrates multivariate distributions of risk posed by weather and price variation over time with the decision support tool GrassGro, defining financial risk profiles showing the probabilities of losses and gains for given management plans. A farm in Tarcutta, NSW, with 1000 ha of pasture and a merino ewe flock stocked at 5 ewes/ha, was simulated as producing crossbred lambs and 20-micron wool, with purchased replacement ewes. Ewe diets were supplemented with purchased wheat grain when pastures were inadequate. GrassGro simulations provided the production base upon which we could build whole-farm financial profiles including all other costs, calculated by application of the Monte Carlo facility in @RISK. The probability distribution of gross margins over the 2002-2017 period was negative 26% of the time, owing to the unusual number of drought years in that sequence. Assuming an opening debt of zero and an overdraft facility with a bank, the risk profile after 10 years indicates farm net profit after taxes (NPAT) or growth in equity was negative 48% of the time. The same farm, but with opening debts of$0.7m, shows NPAT would have been negative 55% of the time. The 10-year median changes in equity for the farm with opening debts of zero and $ 0.7m were + $0.09 million and -$ 1.1 million, respectively. The GrassGro model alone, assumes constant prices to calculate gross margins and offers no financial risk information. The methods described in this paper allow extending the usefulness of the industry-standard GrassGro by illuminating the likely financial risk profile with the farmer’s own management information.

This chapter focuses on the significance of digital media in contemporary bereavement practices, activities that traditionally have involved much attention to the management and expression of emotion. It examines a range of practices including funerals in online communities, news-sharing, cybermemorials and the use of social network sites to investigate some of the ways in which emotional repertoires' are being preserved and transformed as digital media take on increasingly central roles in our daily lives. Death threatens the community with dissolution, ending the participation of a group member and terminating relationships. Religious communities do have some power to shape the technologies they use, but that power is limited by institutional systems of media production and distribution, and by the expectations of audiences. Media have also been absorbed into practices of bereavement and mourning, functioning alongside organised events and informal face-to-face interactions.

Online Christian communities have been describing themselves as 'churches' since the 1980s (Burke et al. 1999), but this category of new media activity continues to elude sociological definition. The title of 'church' tends to be claimed by groups that have developed online forms of worship and prayer, but there are exceptions even to this basic observation; some churches do not worship together, and many worshipping groups do not describe themselves as church. Other common - but neither universal nor exclusive - activities include preaching, evangelism, mutual support, social conversation and debate. The title of 'church' may be contested even within a particular community, claimed by some and rejected by others. To be a church online is simply to do that which a church does, a matter on which Christians are unlikely to reach agreement.

We calculate financial risk profiles for representative vineyards of 50-ha in four wine grape regions of South Australia using straw or living mulches as alternatives to herbicides for under-vine management. Calculations are based on replicated experiments in a commercial vineyard in each district with the most widely grown vine variety of each; the grape yields were measured in 2016 and 2017. Published district grape prices and yields for the years 2006 through 2017 form the basis for novel stochastic analysis. The herbicide (Control) treatment in Barossa Shiraz (BS) and Riverland Merlot (RM) showed greater median Gross Revenues (prices x yields) than the other two districts: Eden Valley Shiraz and Langhorne Creek Cab-Sav. After subtraction of operating costs, and assuming alternative treatments produce grapes of equal quality and price as the Control in a district, the alternatives gave median Gross Margins ( $/ha) greater than the Control in BS but lower than the Control in RM. Gross Margin results were mixed in the other two districts. The Gross Margin results above are magnified in financial Risk Profiles based on variations in Gross Margins times 50 ha across multiple ten-year periods after subtracting taxes, drawings, recurrent capital costs and interest on accumulating debt, for decadal cash margins. The Risk Profile of a treatment in a district is its cumulative distribution of decadal cash margins ($ M). We show that choice of under-vine treatment can significantly affect a vineyard's financial viability.