Biographical Space, Digital Death and Information Literacy Skills: Current Issues

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…Depending on the circumstances, different information needs arise for the affected individuals or their survivors. Existing information behavior research explores death and dying from various perspectives, focusing on the needs of the living, the dying, the bereaved, and the dead (Ochôa & Pinto, 2019). Information needs and practices regarding death have been explored with content analysis (Baker, 2004), surveys (Case, 2008;Zimmerman, 2023), person-centered statistics (Graham et al, 2020), interviews (Case, 2008;Frohlich & Murphy, 2000), and literature reviews (Fourie, 2012(Fourie, , 2020.…”

“…Information behavior types and information practices were analyzed in the context of different age populations (Droser, 2020;Graham et al, 2020;Schoenebeck & Conway, 2020), individuals who lost a family member (Droser, 2020), someone to suicide (Zimmerman, 2023) or diseases (Baker, 2004;Case, 2008), and death more generally (Ochôa & Pinto, 2019). While studies referring to death because of diseases include different information behavior types, such as information seeking, information use, information ignoring, information literacy and information collection (Baker, 2004;Case, 2008;Fourie, 2012Fourie, , 2020Ochôa & Pinto, 2019;Zimmerman, 2023), those and most other relevant studies all emphasize information sharing. Particularly, information sharing in such studies reflects its role in both communication (Baker, 2004;Case, 2008;Fourie, 2012Fourie, , 2020Pausch & Zaslow, 2008;Zimmerman, 2023) and presentation, for example sharing on social media (Fourie, 2020;Ochôa & Pinto, 2019;Schoenebeck & Conway, 2020;Sofka, 2020).…”

“…While studies referring to death because of diseases include different information behavior types, such as information seeking, information use, information ignoring, information literacy and information collection (Baker, 2004;Case, 2008;Fourie, 2012Fourie, , 2020Ochôa & Pinto, 2019;Zimmerman, 2023), those and most other relevant studies all emphasize information sharing. Particularly, information sharing in such studies reflects its role in both communication (Baker, 2004;Case, 2008;Fourie, 2012Fourie, , 2020Pausch & Zaslow, 2008;Zimmerman, 2023) and presentation, for example sharing on social media (Fourie, 2020;Ochôa & Pinto, 2019;Schoenebeck & Conway, 2020;Sofka, 2020). Further, sharing can be a part of death work, for example when the death of a notable person prompts rapid collaboration to memorialize them on their Wikipedia page (Keegan & Brubaker, 2015).…”

“…Further, memories can serve the bereaved to remember someone deceased using their analog or digital legacies (Frohlich & Murphy, 2000; Schoenebeck & Conway, 2020; Sofka, 2020). Nevertheless, the use of shared information online and on social media, as well as the interaction with deceased individuals' profiles, is still linked to many challenges (Ochôa & Pinto, 2019; Sofka, 2020), such as data protection, (re)usability, accessibility, and other ethical, moral and legal aspects that need to be further discussed (Sofka, 2020; Tsaasan et al, 2015) because the will of the deceased person is often not documented, even less often in digital form (Micklitz et al, 2013).…”