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.

人们常说已故的公众人物活在集体记忆中。我们通过跟踪英语在线新闻和社交媒体 (Twitter) 1 以及死亡前后提及的 2,362 位公众人物来量化这一现象。我们测量死亡后注意力的急剧上升和迅速衰减，并将集体记忆建模为交流和文化记忆的组合。聚类揭示了四种死后记忆模式，回归分析表明媒体关注度的提升对于死于年轻、非自然死亡的流行英语的人来说是最大的；长期的提升对领导者来说是最小的，而对艺术家来说是最大的；而且，虽然新闻和推特都是由年轻人和非自然死亡引发的，但当老人或领导人死亡时，新闻还可以策划集体记忆。全面的，