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Digital Walking Dead- How Safe is the Global South?
Dr. Faheem Hussain
Assistant Professor, Department of
Technology and Society, Stony Brook
University, SUNY Korea
faheem.hussain@stonybrook.edu
Mashiat Mostafa
Department of Global and Urban
Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology, Australia
mostafamashiat@gmail.com
Durdonahon Usmonova
Stony Brook University, Department of
Technology and Society, South Korea
durdonahon.usmonova@stonybrook.edu
ABSTRACT
The primary objective of our research 1is to contribute to the
ongoing conversation on Digital Afterlife through the lenses of
Global South. All major works and services on Digital Afterlife are
based on western societies' contexts. With increasing number of
ICT users in the developing countries, Digital Afterlife challenges
have the ominous potential of causing significant problems in
Global South. For this exploratory research, we primarily focused
on Facebook specific Digital Afterlife policies, cases, and user
feedback. Based on our qualitative research, we identified the
major Global South specific Digital Afterlife challenges within the
areas of Privacy, Digital Ownership, Culture, and Legal
Framework. We showed that people and governments in
developing countries are relatively less aware and more vulnerable
of the Digital Afterlife centric risks. There are limited or no legal
or social safety nets present to address such problems, and with no
post-mortem services customized for them. We conclude by
proposing a set of recommendations to ensure inclusive, truly
global, and sustainable Digital Afterlife policies and solutions.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Security and privacy →Human and societal aspects of security
and privacy; •• Human-centered computing → Social media
KEYWORDS
Digital Afterlife; ICT4D; Facebook; Global South; Privacy
ACM Reference format:
F. Hussain, M. Mostafa and D. Usmonova. 2017. Digital Walking Dead-
How Safe is the Global South? In Proceedings of ICTD 2017 conference,
Lahore, Pakistan, November 2017 (Lahore’17), 4 pages.
DOI: 10.1145/3136560.3136593
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent times, connections with numerous digital services have
ensured better access to information, citizen services,
communication, productivity, and much more. Such digitization
process enforces every user to leave a part of her presence, big or
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small, in digital formats in cyberspace. This digital footprint is left
through one's Google mails, Facebook account, Amazon’s online
services, or Apple’s iTunes. After any user's biological death, these
digital remnants would continue to exist in the cyberspace, as her
Digital Afterlife.
The primary objective of our exploratory research is to contribute
to the ongoing conversation on Digital Afterlife through the lenses
of Global South. Through our work, we would like to highlight the
key challenges, present and upcoming, faced by the developing
communities globally while dealing with deceased online users,
their digital properties, and post-mortem digital footprints. There
had been some considerable research on Digital Afterlife.
However, all the major works and services related to this issue are
based on developed societies' contexts. At present, there is a
considerable gap in the Digital Afterlife scholarship as far as
addressing the developing region's challenges and aspirations are
concerned.
According to Brubaker, we found evidence of works on Digital
Afterlife analyzing the memorial websites of late 90s in the
literatures of Roberts and Vidal [1-2]. Within HCI, Kaye et al.
talked about “legacy” elements of any user, which represent an
individual’s digital work [3]. Kirk and Banks’ “context collapse”
describes another important aspect of dealing with the deceased
online. According to some experts, such oversimplification of
access raised concerns with privacy, social expectations, and grief
management [1, 4-5]. Massimi and Charise looked into the design
scenarios presented by Digital Afterlife through the lens of
“thanatosensitivity” [1, 6]. Massimi and his fellow researchers
mentioned the need of sensitive orientation of any technological
solution in dealing with the deceased’s data. At the same time,
Massimi and Charise recognized the inherent challenge that ICTs,
as we know, are yet to be designed to effectively acknowledge and
reflect the eventual death of their users [5]. Nevertheless, with few
exceptions like the works of Selina Ellis Gray and Paul, who
recognized the need of inclusion and diversity in design, majority
of the works on digital post-mortem literature had an underlying
assumption of somewhat universality of Digital Afterlife related
challenges [7]. The cultural nuances, socio-economic perspectives,
political climate, regional infrastructure- the factors which have
ICTD '17, November 16–19, 2017, Lahore, Pakistan
© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5277-
2/17/11$15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3136560.3136593
ICTD’17, November 2017, Lahore Pakistan
F. Hussain et al.
2
proven to be immensely critical for ICT diffusion in Global South
are not considered and included in the present Digital Afterlife
scholarship.
The present day ICT services, online and offline are not designed
to include options for dead users or the management of digital
resources after the corresponding users' death. After going through
numerous court cases, confusions, and realization about the
consistently growing number of dead users, the major net based
global entities like Facebook, Google, Twitter are now putting
considerable efforts, provisions, and policies in place to deal with
Digital Afterlife. Sadly, these new options are too western society
specific and do not include Global South oriented challenges such
as absence of copyright laws, scarcity of localized ICT services,
poor governance, apathy of policymakers and service providers,
etc.
We have furthermore observed that the Global South specific
ICT4D literature do not have any specific works on Digital
Afterlife issues. Heeks talked about the pitfalls of trends, where
developing countries follow the working models of developed
nations without much customization, and thus suffer failures [8].
Toyoma pressed on the importance of focusing on the developing
countries' culture (or lack of it) on technology adaptation, thus
failing on ensuring tangible social impacts [9]. Some experts have
effectively made the case against the "universality" of these
concepts when it comes to ICT adaptations in Global South [10-
11]. But none of these works addressed or mentioned the various
dimensions of Digital Afterlife for the bottom billions. We believe,
this topic is critical enough to be discussed within the contemporary
ICT4D discourse.
2 DIGITAL AFTERLIFE: WHAT WE KNOW
2.1 Major Challenges of Digital Afterlife
2.1.1 Culture. Due to the deceased users’ online presence, the
bereaved now have the opportunities to mourn publicly, giving
more options for post-death rituals [2]. Nevertheless, digital
afterlife complicates the ways people mourn their deceased [12]. At
times, the challenge comes while considering the possible
transferability of offline, culturally contextualized bereavement
behavior in social media and other online sphere. A big controversy
stems out while managing social network or other online accounts
of the deceased. Who controls these accounts? How to interact with
the digital remnants of a dead user? Is it culturally acceptable to
troll a dead person’s photos/posts online? The other main cultural
dimension is the online bereavement practices and the possible
expectation of privacy while doing so [12].
2.1.2 Privacy. A major area of concern in Digital Afterlife is
privacy. This is related with any user’s digital property
management too. Netizens and experts alike are raising questions
on how to secure privacy of anyone’s digital presence after her
death. People are confused with which laws or social practices to
follow as far as the digital bequeathing is concerned. Up till now,
there has been no consensus on following a common set of policies
in this regard [12]. All major online services and platforms are each
addressing these challenges in their own ways, adding to further
confusion among users, especially when one single user possesses
multiple accounts of different services across the net. Some experts
highlighted the unique nature of digital contents and resources of
any dead user, which in many ways may not be efficiently,
managed using any traditional laws or provisions.
2.1.3 Digital Property and Ownership Disputes. Digital property
management of the deceased is fast becoming a contentious issue
from legal standpoints, especially for communities with frequent
online users. The first set of challenges comes from the unique
nature of digital properties. Such properties are electronically
stored information, and can come in the shape of websites, emails
(e.g., Gmail), social networking accounts (e.g., Facebook,
Instagram) and related activities, blogs, photo and video sharing
sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr), music accounts (e.g., Pandora), online
games (e.g., Warcraft), and online data storage accounts (e.g.,
Dropbox). Traditional property and inheritance laws and social
norms are not always applicable for these newer types of human
assets. Many online services believe the access and ownership
contract between an organization and a user automatically ends as
soon as the latter physically dies, thus transferring all the related
digital properties back to the service providers [13]. This raises the
talking points related to the present formats of “Terms of Service”
or “Terms of Use Agreement”. We found out that any kind of
legally purchased digital music, which are licensed for individual
use cannot be bequeathed after the death of the owner of that
particular file. Host sites like Facebook and YouTube reserves the
rights to reuse the images or videos for certain applications in their
system.
2.1.4 Legal Framework. The existing laws on ICT, copyrights, and
inheritance, especially in the developed countries, have not
accommodated digital afterlife related challenges. In fact, the
contemporary legal framework has made it punishable for any
deceased user’s friends or family members to access her username,
account information, and related other services. According to
USA’s “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984” or CFAA, such
access is deemed as unauthorized and punishable offense. All the
fifty states of USA also have criminalized similar acts of
“unauthorized access” [14]. Countries like Australia, South Africa,
and European Union members have similar provisions under their
computer privacy related Acts/Laws [15].
3 DIGITAL AFTERLIFE @ GLOBAL SOUTH:
THE KEY CHALLENGES
We believe, when it comes to Digital Afterlife, in addition to the
common key challenges faced by the present-day netizens of
predominantly affluent societies, newer risks also can rise for the
new comers, the netizens of Global South.
3.1 Privacy
Studies have shown that not many research have been done that
include privacy issues outside the known western discourses [16-
17]. Ahmed et al. pointed out that the culturally situated privacy
practices, expectation, and impacts in Global South often contradict
the western privacy concepts [18-19]. When it comes to managing
the post-mortem digital accounts and the online presence of
Digital Walking Dead- How Safe is the Global South?
ICTD’17, November2017, Lahore, Pakistan
3
deceased users, the industry and the experts, who are
predominantly western, are yet to be in unison. In the following, we
have further discussed specific post-mortem cases of online user
defamation in developing countries.
3.1.1 Case of Rajib Haider. Ahmed Rajib Haider was the first
blogger to be killed in Bangladesh by religious extremists on
February 15, 2013. Just two hours after his killing, a URL of a blog,
titled "Sacred Lies", were distributed online, claiming to be written
by Rajib. Those posts were anti-Islamic and was heavily shared
online, portraying him as an anti-religious person, thus justifying
his murder. This blog contained 19 posts, allegedly written by Rajib
between June 18 and October 2 of 2012. However, investigation
found that that particular blog site was not accessed by anyone
before and suddenly received around 60,000 hits on the night of the
murder of Rajib. The Blogger and Online Activists Network
claimed that such blog site (nuranichapa.wordpress.com) was
opened after the murder of the blogger in order to defame his work
and to derail the Anti-War Criminal protests of Shahbag Movement
[20]. As there is no provision of dealing with online defamation of
deceased users in Bangladesh, no action was taken to avoid similar
fabricated incidents in future.
3.2 Ownership
ICT service providers, government institutions, and citizen groups
in many of the low and low-mid income economies are playing
catching up when it comes to ensuring a secured and customized
environment for ICT service proliferation and future growth. Our
research found no wide scale, major initiatives in terms of post-
mortem digital property management in Global South. Countries
like India, Malaysia, and Philippines have explicit provisions for
prosecuting illegal and unauthorized cyber access, but none has any
clauses or amendments for incorporating account and ownership
issues of deceased netizens [21].
3.2.1 Case of Bangladesh's Biggest Online Humanitarian
Fundraising. Lack of understanding about Digital Afterlife can
cause personal and financial losses. In Bangladesh, arguably the
biggest Facebook based fund raising campaign took place between
May 2013 and October 2014, to save a university student and a
social activist, Nahian Al Muktadir. He was suffering from cancer.
Nahian's friends and family used the Facebook platform very
effectively and raised considerable amount (approximately US $
125,000) for his treatment [22]. This humanitarian effort also stood
out as Nahian himself shared his daily experience of struggle and
survival against cancer in Facebook. Unfortunately, he died on
October 2, 2014. His family and friends wanted to muster and
publish all of Nahian's Facebook statuses during this period.
However, they were not able to access his Facebook account. Right
after Nahian's death, an unknown entity reported to Facebook about
his death without keeping his family in the loop. His account was
memorialized and all of Nahian's Facebook statuses on cancer came
inaccessible to others. Nahian's family tried to convince Facebook
to allow them with access without any success. The entire episode
highlighted the disconnection between offline and online
mourning.
3.3 Legal Framework
The state of legal system dealing with ICT industry, applications,
and related social impacts in general is in its early phase in most of
the Global South countries. According to Freedom House, the net
users of majority of developing nations are facing considerable
challenges in practicing their freedom of expression online [23].
Many of the corresponding governments are found to be less
interested to protect the rights and mobility of their citizens online
and more willing to enforce digital surveillance in the name of
protecting national interests. Another contentious issue on
managing post-mortem user resources is jurisdiction. Who has the
right to decide on the content of the deceased online users? The
global service providers or the government that represent the geo-
political identity of any dead user? Tech giants like Google and
Facebook in most cases ignore the requests of developing countries
when it comes to censorship, surveillance, and user information
sharing. There is no evidence till now to support that these
companies will act differently and more amicably when it comes to
enforcing post mortem data management and possible profitable
data mining operations for any user account after her or his death.
3.4 Culture
The culture of mourning for the deceased got a new platform in the
digital world. At the same time, the physically dead people got the
opportunity to become "immortal" in the cyberspace. Our research
found that cases of frequent activities using dead users' accounts on
Facebook are very common in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and other parts of South Asia. One of the reasons for such active
accounts in Afghanistan is the lack of knowledge about social
media facilities and more related to the culture of the country where
death of a person is more about personal grief and emotional
connection. Examples of negligence in memorializing accounts of
deceased users can be seen present in the accounts of Aref Shaigan
and Lutfullah Gheiase. In both of these cases the user has passed
away one year ago and yet the accounts are still active and there is
no report of the person to be dead to Facebook. Friends of the users
are posting photos and videos of the person’s funeral ceremony and
tagging the friends and the user to mourn on the dead.
Consequently, the use of social media in mourning is more related
to sharing the news than deactivating or memorializing the account
[24].
4 FUTURE WORK and CONCLUSION
This research is an effort to highlight the growing importance and
the significant absence of Global South in the scholarships and
services of Digital Afterlife. We have explored the gap in Global
South specific ICT4D literature and customized solutions in
relation with Digital Afterlife. Due to poor awareness within the
developing regions about Digital Afterlife challenges, we struggled
to collect information and case studies from the field, mostly
related to Facebook. For our future work, we would like to cover
Digital Afterlife service and related impact for Google, Twitter,
LinkedIn, and other Global South specific ICT services, and to
conduct research on developing country specific Digital Afterlife
ICTD’17, November 2017, Lahore Pakistan
F. Hussain et al.
4
solutions. Based on our present understanding of Digital Afterlife
and Global South, we believe that in near future, the following steps
need to be taken by the related stakeholders.
4.1 Raising Awareness about Digital Afterlife
According to our research, lack of understanding about the basic
concepts of Digital Afterlife is a major obstacle in Global South.
People are still unaware about the negative impacts (e.g., copyright
infringement, privacy violation, identity theft, loss of private data,
etc.) of a poorly managed digital account of a deceased person.
Alongside the universal push for last mile digitization, there needs
to be explicit conversations on the increasing significance of digital
identity and property management, for both the living and the dead
among the new ICT users in developing countries. For example,
Facebook and Google need to be proactive in ensuring the
translation of their Digital Afterlife services in all the local
languages their primary services are available, which is not the case
at present.
4.2 Empathizing Policy Framework
We need to push for establishing forward looking, inclusive ICT
policy framework, which without blindly following the western
solutions, can recognize the Digital Afterlife specific challenges
and localized solutions. Regional and global citizen groups,
consumer rights associations, academics, and ICT service providers
need to pursue, advocate, and work with the related government for
achieving such empathizing policy environment. For some of the
developing countries such initiatives are easier to start than others.
An emerging country like Myanmar can take advantage of their
present socio-economic realities. This country has recently
transitioned to democracy. ICT users there are on the rise
exponentially and there is a new ICT policy being enacted to
facilitate rapid growth in connectivity and ICT industry. Here, the
Digital Afterlife specific factors have the chance to be included in
the ICT policies with relative ease alongside the traditional
perspectives of online copyright and intellectual property rights
4.3 Responsible and Inclusive Service Providers
The proliferation of Facebook and Google represents the changed
landscape in present geopolitics. These trans-national ICT entities
have control over global populations' digital data, their personal
information, their present preference and possible future
aspirations. The traditional governance systems, especially the ones
from Global South are struggling to negotiate with such reality. The
issues regarding ownership and legal jurisdiction over digital data
of the living and dead, irrespective of the users' national identities,
have become a part of uncharted regulatory territory. Hence,
conversations need to be initiated to include local representation in
the decision-making and design process of ICT services with
international foothold. For example, Facebook or similar services
need to educate the emerging markets about Digital Afterlife and
propose society-specific solutions, which are sensitive toward local
culture and respectful toward local legal systems.
4.3 Diverse and Ethical Digital Afterlife Solutions
When it comes to designing and rolling out Digital Afterlife
services and solutions, the diverse and complex nature of human
mourning, and the correlated ethical dimensions are important to
be taken into consideration [6]. This strategy needs to be followed
by the policymakers, private service providers, and citizen action
groups, more so in Global South, where people are usually
underrepresented in technology design and adaptation phases. For
example, online and offline collaborative wikis and discussion
groups can be established by the ICT powerhouse India, where
millions of people from diverse ethnic, economic, and social
backgrounds are getting online for the first time daily, to discuss,
internalize, and propose solutions on Digital Life with taking into
consideration the complex socio-political-religious realities of that
country.
We do not claim that our collected information from the field and
our qualitative analyses of literature are representative enough to
capture all the major Digital Afterlife challenges faced by the
Global South. However, through our research, we have initiated
exploring the unique characteristics, challenges, and opportunities
of Global South compared to developed nations when it comes to
dealing with Digital Afterlife phenomenon. We tried to show that
the level of vulnerability is different in the Global South. Here, we
have witnessed people getting murdered with fake account
information. We have also seen the deceased persons' accounts
getting hacked, violated, and misused. As a whole, we believe, our
exploratory analyses of the socio-economic-policy centric impacts
and implications of Digital Afterlife contribute a rich understanding
of ICT adaptation and post-mortem digital resource management in
the increasingly important and often underrepresented Global
South.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT and
Future Planning (MSIP), Korea, under the “ICT Consilience
Creative Program” (reference number IITP-2015-R0346-15-1007)
supervised by the Institute for Information and Communications
Technology Promotion (IITP).
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