Stewarding a legacy

Abstract

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 postmortem 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.

Tending Unmarked Graves

“…A growing body of research in social computing and related fields has documented how people connected to the deceased continue to interact with post-mortem profiles [6,7,21,31,43], reappropriating them into digital memorials [35,40], personal archives [1,4,31], and gathering places for online communities [7,21,40,43]. In terms of content, comments posted soon after death express shock and disbelief, as well as acknowledging the death, often with the phrase "RIP. "…”

Post-userism

“…The complexities of algorithmically-based systems, such as search engines, can lead to inadvertent associations, e.g., between gay men and sex offenders [1] or between African Americans and incarcerated criminals [7,82]. Social media profiles for deceased users are transformed by their friends and family into memorial pages [16,17]; the people "using" such profiles differ from the site's representation of who the profile's user is. Recent interest in technology non-use [9,76] is also symptomatic of this larger condition.…”

“…Facebook memorial profiles offer an example of flexibility in representations of a user [17,18]. They maintain some aspects of a typical user representation while forgoing others.…”

"PS. I Love You"

“…Some participants gave full consideration to the need for an executor role -arguing the importance of having a living person who could take responsibility for the messages. Firstly, Brubaker et al [8] describe the way that services such as Google are beginning to employ processes that automatically shut down accounts after period of activity; in instances where users have employed posthumous technology to post on their behalf after death this automatic inactivation of accounts would not happen. In eighty years we could find ourselves in the bizarre situation where a set of social media profiles of deceased individuals are engaged in frequent communication with each other.…”

“…whereby the deceased digitally communicate with the living. With some exceptions [see 7,8,44], we assert that this is a practice that has received relatively little attention from the research community. In order to better understand this practice we define a set of design requirements for posthumous communication services that demonstrate consideration and empathy for people who encounter them.…”