The afterlife of digital identity

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.