Stewarding Online Identities for the Deceased

Given the important role that social network sites play in online bereavement practices, we are exploring issues around inheritance and post-mortem data management of Facebook accounts. We are finding that people focus less on ownership of data, and instead on the duties and potential conflicts associated with maintaining accounts post-mortem.

“Stewardship” is an alternative to inheritance when designing for post-mortem data management practices. Our research on post-mortem data management activities highlights how stewards are accountable and responsible to the deceased and various survivors. However, weighing competing responsibilities is complicated by varied relationships with disparate survivors, as well as the inability to consult with the deceased.

Post-mortem solutions need to account for the needs of stewards in addition to those of the deceased and survivors. Stewardship as a model better accounts for the interpersonal responsibilities that accompany online data than inheritance alone.

Publications

PACM HCI
Getting Your Facebook Affairs in Order: User Expectations in Post-mortem Profile Management Katie Z. Gach and Jed R. Brubaker
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, 1: Article 174
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- DOI: 10.1145/3449248
Legacy Contact is a Facebook feature that allows account holders to choose someone to manage their profile after they have died. This study evaluates the Legacy Contact setup process, and asks how users form and communicate expectations about what an active post-mortem manager’s responsibilities would be. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with adult Facebook account holders in the US who either configured their own settings or were chosen for future delegation by someone else. We found that account holders chose the Facebook Friend they felt closest to, and that selection was often reciprocated. Both account holders and legacy contacts felt confident that they had communicated (or could communicate) well about the legacy contact’s responsibilities, but their expectations did not align with the actual functionality of the Legacy Contact system. We argue that the misalignment of user expectations and system functionality indicates a failed setup process. Our findings suggest that post-mortem management systems require a setup process that is fundamentally different from the quick-clickthrough standards of everyday interaction design. The ramifications of a post-mortem manager’s expectations not being met during a time of grief, points to the urgent need for a setup process that prompts thoughtfulness and deliberation, and forms accurate expectations for account holders and future post-mortem managers alike.
CHIWorkshop paper
Designing Postmortem Profile Deletion as a Community Ritual Katie Z. Gach and Jed R. Brubaker
Workshop on HCI at End-of-Life and Beyond at the 2020 ACM SIGCHI Conference
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The ephemerality of the digital world is strangely incompatible with our physical, mortal existence. This is most evident when people who use social media die and leave behind a digital footprint that insinuates their presence. The lack of recognition of the emotional significance of the deceased’s social media presence has made post-mortem profile deletion a barrier to the ongoinginess of survivors. The work described here incorporates community ritual practices with principles of slow HCI to develop a planning tool for ritualizing profile deletion that honors both the deceased’s wishes, and the healthy ongoingness of bereaved survivors. Those closest to the deceased will plan a ritual that recognizes and honors their attachments to the deceased’s digital presence, while completing the task of deleting the specified account. We believe that making profile deletion a community ritual will support bereaved people by giving them permission and instructions to honor the significance of the deceased’s digital footprint.
Doctoral Consortium
How to Delete the Dead: Honoring Negative Affective Experiences with Postmortem Data Katie Z. Gach
CSCW 2020 Doctoral Consortium
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Formative experiences in human lives are often unpleasant. Yet social technologies today are designed to presume positive experiences; “design for delight” is even a principle in user interface development [9]. So when humans have negative life experiences like the loss of a loved one, which often include technology-related tasks, the designs of their technologies can exacerbate that negativity [5]. It is these negative experiences—interactions that trigger negative affects related to human sadness or distress— that design and engineering can and must honor. My dissertation will frame death as a key example of a difficult life experience that often requires digital interactions and digital tasks, yet currently lacks adequate tools to facilitate compassionate and meaningful interactions in a digital context. Incorporating empirical work in human-computer interaction with roots in cultural anthropology, I propose a project that will examine the role of ritual in technologically mediated human interactions during times of grief. Through interviews, participant observation, and tech support, I will create ritual-based practices around postmortem data that will honor the experiences people have of the presence of the deceased within that data, while maintaining the necessary control or closure of accounts that may be preferred.
CHI
Legacy Contact: Designing and Implementing Post-mortem Stewardship at Facebook Jed R. Brubaker and Vanessa Callison-Burch
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2016)
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- DOI: 10.1145/2858036.2858254
Post-mortem profiles on social network sites serve as both an archive of the deceased person’s life and a gathering place for friends and loved ones. Many existing systems utilize inheritance as a model for post-mortem data management. However, the social and networked nature of personal data on social media, as well as the memorializing practices in which friends engage, indicate that other approaches are necessary. In this paper, we articulate the design choices made throughout the development of Legacy Contact, a post-mortem data management solution designed and deployed at Facebook. Building on the duties and responsibilities identified by Brubaker et al., we describe how Legacy Contact was designed to honor last requests, provide information surrounding death, preserve the memory of the deceased, and facilitate memorializing practices. We provide details around the design of the Legacy Contact selection process, the functionality provided to legacy contacts after accounts have been memorialized, and changes made to post-mortem profiles.
CHI
Stewarding a Legacy: Responsibilities and Relationships in the Management of Post-mortem Data Jed R. Brubaker, Lynn S. Dombrowski, Anita M. Gilbert, Nafiri Kusumakaulika, and Gillian R. Hayes
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2014)
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- DOI: 10.1145/2556288.2557059
This paper extends research on the giving and inheriting of digital artifacts by examining social network site accounts post-mortem. Given the important role that social network sites play in online bereavement practices, we conducted a series of in-depth qualitative interviews to explore issues around inheritance and post-mortem data management of Facebook accounts. We found that participants focused less on ownership of the data, and instead on the duties and potential conflicts associated with maintaining an account post-mortem. Subsequently, we argue for ’stewardship’ as an alternative to inheritance for framing post-mortem data management practices. Analysis of post-mortem data management activities highlights how stewards are accountable and responsible to the deceased and various survivors. However, weighing competing responsibilities is complicated by varied relationships with disparate survivors, as well as the inability to consult with the deceased. Based on our findings, we claim that post-mortem solutions need to account for the needs of stewards in addition to those of the deceased and survivors. We suggest that a model of stewardship better accounts for the interpersonal responsibilities that accompany online data than inheritance alone.
Journal
Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning Jed R. Brubaker, Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish
The Information Society 29, 3: 152–163
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- DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2013.777300
Online identities survive the deaths of those they represent, leaving friends and families to struggle with the appropriate ways to incorporate these identities into the practices of grief and mourning, raising important questions. How are practices of online memorialization connected to conventional rituals of grief and mourning? What is the role of online digital identity postmortem? How do trajectories of death and dying incorporate both online and offline concerns? Based on our qualitative study of death and mourning online, we identify the way that social networking sites enable expansion—temporally, spatially, and socially—of public mourning. Rather than looking at online practices as disruptions of traditional practices of grief and memorialization, we examine them as new sites in which public mourning takes place.