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abstract

The afterlife of digital identity

Published: 26 April 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The death of a user challenges many of the assumptions we hold for social network sites, social media, and digital identity architecture. Death provides a natural breaching experiment that violates core design assumptions about the relationship between users, their accounts, and related data. By studying death in the context of social media, my work aims to understand how people interact with and experience digital identity systems. It demonstrates limitations and provides insight into how social computing systems can better support the entirety of our lives -- including when those lives come to an end.

References

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Bowker, G. C., Baker, K., Millerand, F., and Ribes, D. Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment. In J. Hunsinger, L. Klastrup and M. Allen, eds., Intl. Handbook of Internet Research. 2010, 97--117.
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Brubaker, J. R., Hayes, G. R., and Dourish, P. Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a site for the expansion of death and mourning. Information Society, In press.
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Brubaker, J. R. and Hayes, G. R. "We will never forget you {online}": An empirical investigation of post-mortem MySpace comments. In Proc. CSCW 2011.
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Lustig, N. 2.89m Facebook Users Will Die in 2012, 580,000 in the USA. http://bit.ly/1ixavmy.
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Massimi, M. and Baecker, R. M. Dealing with death in design. In Proc. CHI 2011.
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Odom, W., Harper, R., Sellen, A., Kirk, D., and Banks, R. Passing on & putting to rest. In Proc. CHI 2010.
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Poster, M. Information please: culture and politics in the age of digital machines. Duke University Press, 2006.
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Roberts, P. and Vidal, L. Perpetual care in cyberspace: A portrait of Web memorials. OMEGA 40, 4 (2000), 521--545.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '14: CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2014
2620 pages
ISBN:9781450324748
DOI:10.1145/2559206
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 April 2014

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Author Tags

  1. death
  2. digital identity
  3. digital legacy
  4. facebook
  5. myspace
  6. social media
  7. social network sites
  8. stewardship

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CHI '14
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CHI '14: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 26 - May 1, 2014
Ontario, Toronto, Canada

Acceptance Rates

CHI EA '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 1,000 of 3,200 submissions, 31%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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CHI 2025
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 26 - May 1, 2025
Yokohama , Japan

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  • (2024)Let’s Talk About Death: Existential Conversations with ChatbotsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642421(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Designing Anekdota: Investigating Personal Metadata for LegacyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581495(1-14)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Dying, Death, and the Afterlife in Human-Computer Interaction. A Scoping Review.Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581199(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Retain or Delete? Intentions for Social Network Accounts After DeathThe Art of Dying10.1007/978-3-031-35217-1_5(89-114)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
  • (2021)Interactions posthumes sur Facebook. Regard sur l’hommage, la sensibilisation à l’héritage et l’échange entre vivantsPosthumous Interactions on Facebook: A Look at Tributes, Legacy Awareness and Discussions among the LivingInteracciones póstumas en Facebook. Una mirada al homenaje, a la sensibilización a la herencia y al intercambio entre los vivosFrontières10.7202/1083219ar32:2Online publication date: 2021
  • (2021)Posthumous data at stake: An Overview of Digital Immortality IssuesProceedings of the XX Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3472301.3484358(1-8)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
  • (2020)Challenges of Designing Consent: Consent Mechanics in Video Games as Models for Interactive User AgencyProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376827(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
  • (2016)Designing Speculative CivicsProceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2858036.2858505(4979-4990)Online publication date: 7-May-2016

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