Death & the Social Network

The mass adoption of social network sites includes, as a natural consequence, the growing presence of profiles representing individuals who are no longer alive. However, the death of a user does not result in the elimination of his or her account nor the profile’s place inside a network of digital peers. Indeed, the fact that friends use a user’s profile page, post mortem, to say last goodbyes, share memories, and coordinate funereal arrangements is well known, if not frequently discussed. Death plays an increasingly significant role, then, in the experience of social networking. More broadly, the entwining of online and offline experience highlights the importance of thinking about digital representations as things that might well survive their owners or referents.

Focusing on death highlights three important themes for social networks and the representation of identity for their users:

Embodiment concerns the way that data objects and digital representations “stand for” human bodies. It encapsulates issues of access, issues of ownership, issues of management, issues of presence, issues of personhood, and issues of participatory status, both at the technical level and at the social.

Representation invokes the traditional considerations of online identity, the presentation of self, and the crafting of acceptable personas as well as consideration of the ways in which records are created with specific purposes and representations in mind. Representation relates to embodiment in that it speaks to the relationship that holds between the data object and the human body, but it incorporates too the active, purposive, strategic practices of re-present-ing, that is, of making something present again, with particular ends in mind.

Temporality concerns the notion of “lifecycles” as it has been applied in system development—the circumstances under which digital systems come into being, are put to use, and are taken out of service. The life of a user and the life of that user’s data are frequently not the same, an issue particularly acute when considering the continuation of dead user profiles in SNS.

Publications

Experiences of Trust in Postmortem Profile Management Gach, Katie Z. and Brubaker, Jed R.
ACM Trans. Soc. Comput. 3, 1: Article 2

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BibTeX
DOI: 10.1145/3365525

@article{Gach2020TSC,
  title = {Experiences of {T}rust in {P}ostmortem {P}rofile {M}anagement},
  author = {Gach, Katie Z. and Brubaker, Jed R.},
  doi = {10.1145/3365525},
  journal = {ACM Trans. Soc. Comput.},
  number = {1},
  pages = {Article 2},
  numpages = {26},
  volume = {3},
  month = feb,
  year = {2020},
  tags = {death-sns}
}

Orienting to Networked Grief: Situated Perspectives of Communal Mourning on Facebook Brubaker, Jed R. and Hayes, Gillian R. and Mazmanian, Melissa
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW: Article 27
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- DOI: 10.1145/3359129
Tending Unmarked Graves: Classification of Post-mortem Content on Social Media Jiang, Jialun "Aaron" and Brubaker, Jed R.
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW: Article 81
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- DOI: 10.1145/3274350
User-generated content is central to social computing scholarship. However, researchers and practitioners often presume that these users are alive. Failing to account for mortality is problematic in social media where an increasing number of profiles represent those who have died. Identifying mortality can empower designers to better manage content and support the bereaved, as well as promote high-quality data science. Based on a computational linguistic analysis of post-mortem social media profiles and content, we report on classifiers developed to detect mortality and show that mortality can be determined after the first few occurrences of post-mortem content. Applying our classifiers to content from two other platforms also provided good results. Finally, we discuss trade-offs between models that emphasize pre- vs. post-mortem precision in this sensitive context. These results mark a first step toward identifying mortality at scale, and show how designers and scientists can attend to mortality in their work.
Describing and Classifying Post-Mortem Content on Social Media Jiang, Jialun "Aaron" and Brubaker, Jed
Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM-2018)
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As the quantity of user profiles on social media grows, so does the number of post-mortem profiles. In this paper, we present a computational linguistic analysis of post-mortem social media profiles. Specifically, we provide an analysis of pre- vs. post-mortem language use, followed by a description of classifiers we developed that can accurately classify the mortality of social media profiles. These results shed initial lights into the ways in which people speak to the dead, and mark a first step toward accurately identifying mortality on a large scale.
"Control your emotions, Potter": An Analysis of Grief Policing on Facebook in Response to Celebrity Death Gach, Katie Z. and Fiesler, Casey and Brubaker, Jed R.
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, CSCW: Article 47
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- DOI: 10.1145/3134682
As social media platforms become a larger part of sharing life, they have by necessity become a part of sharing death. In life, pop culture fans can have parasocial (one-sided, mediated) relationships with celebrities. Yet when fans of departed celebrities express their grief in public comment threads, conversations often result in disagreements about how to grieve. These disagreements consistently appear in response to the deaths of public figures, and have been broadly labeled "grief policing." We performed a thematic analysis of public Facebook comments responding to the deaths of Alan Rickman, David Bowie, and Prince. Our findings describe prominent grief policing practices and explain how commenters may be importing norms from other contexts when shared spaces consist of transient interactions that make norm formation difficult. Our findings contribute to a broader understanding of how conflicting norms affect discourse in transient online spaces. Approaching online incivility through a lens of conflicting social norm enforcement may open doors for improvements in public discourse online.
Legacy Contact: Designing and Implementing Post-mortem Stewardship at Facebook Brubaker, Jed R. and Callison-Burch, Vanessa
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’16
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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.

’Is’ to ’Was’: Coordination and Commemoration on Posthumous Wikipedia Biographies Keegan, Brian C. and Brubaker, Jed R.
Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW ’15

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BibTeX
DOI: 10.1145/2675133.2675238

@inproceedings{Keegan2015,
  address = {New York, New York, USA},
  author = {Keegan, Brian C. and Brubaker, Jed R.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work {\&} Social Computing - CSCW '15},
  doi = {10.1145/2675133.2675238},
  isbn = {9781450329224},
  keywords = {death-sns,wikipedia},
  tags = {death-sns,wikipedia},
  pages = {533--546},
  publisher = {ACM Press},
  title = {{'Is' to 'Was': Coordination and Commemoration on Posthumous Wikipedia Biographies}},
  url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2675133.2675238},
  year = {2015}
}

Stewarding a Legacy: Responsibilities and Relationships in the Management of Post-mortem Data Brubaker, Jed R. and Dombrowski, Lynn S. and Gilbert, Anita M. and Kusumakaulika, Nafiri and Hayes, Gillian R.
Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’14
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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.
Death, Memorialization, and Social Media: A Platform Perspective for Personal Archives Acker, Amelia and Brubaker, Jed R.
Archivaria 77
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Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning Brubaker, Jed R. and Hayes, Gillian R. and Dourish, Paul
The Information Society 29, 3: 152–163

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BibTeX
DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2013.777300

@article{Brubaker2013,
  address = {San Diego, CA, USA},
  author = {Brubaker, Jed R. and Hayes, Gillian R. and Dourish, Paul},
  doi = {10.1080/01972243.2013.777300},
  issn = {0197-2243},
  journal = {The Information Society},
  keywords = {death-sns,stewardship},
  tags = {death-sns,stewardship},
  month = may,
  number = {3},
  pages = {152--163},
  title = {{Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning}},
  url = {http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01972243.2013.777300},
  volume = {29},
  year = {2013}
}

Grief-Stricken in a Crowd: The Language of Bereavement and Distress in Social Media Brubaker, Jed R. and Kivran-Swaine, F and Taber, L. and Hayes, Gillian R.
Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{Brubaker2012,
  address = {Dublin, Ireland},
  author = {Brubaker, Jed R. and Kivran-Swaine, F and Taber, L. and Hayes, Gillian R.},
  booktitle = {Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media},
  editor = {Breslin, John G. and Ellison, Nicole B. and Shanahan, James G. and Tufekci, Zeynep},
  keywords = {Full Papers,death-sns},
  tags = {death-sns},
  pages = {42--49},
  publisher = {The AAAI Press},
  title = {{Grief-Stricken in a Crowd: The Language of Bereavement and Distress in Social Media}},
  url = {http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/viewFile/4622/4965},
  year = {2012}
}

"We will never forget you [online]": an empirical investigation of post-mortem MySpace comments Brubaker, Jed R. and Hayes, Gillian R.
Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW ’11

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BibTeX
DOI: 10.1145/1958824.1958843

@inproceedings{Brubaker2011,
  address = {New York, New York, USA},
  author = {Brubaker, Jed R. and Hayes, Gillian R.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '11},
  doi = {10.1145/1958824.1958843},
  isbn = {9781450305563},
  keywords = {death-sns},
  tags = {death-sns},
  pages = {123--132},
  publisher = {ACM Press},
  title = {{"We will never forget you [online]": an empirical investigation of post-mortem MySpace comments}},
  url = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1958824.1958843},
  year = {2011}
}

Death and the Social Network Brubaker, Jed R. and Vertesi, Janet
HCI at the End of Life Workshop at CHI2010

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{Brubaker2010a,
  address = {Savannah, GA},
  author = {Brubaker, Jed R. and Vertesi, Janet},
  booktitle = {HCI at the End of Life Workshop at CHI2010},
  keywords = {death-sns,workshop},
  tags = {workshop,death-sns},
  month = feb,
  title = {{Death and the Social Network}},
  year = {2010}
}