  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) one year before and
after death. We measure the spike and decay of attention following death and
model them as the interplay of communicative and cultural memory. Clustering
reveals four patterns of post-mortem memory, and regression analysis shows that
boosts in media attention are largest for pre-mortem popular anglophones of any
gender 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 who is remembered by society, and the distinct roles of news
and social media in collective memory formation.
