Data plans
Photos by Kimberly Coffin and Patrick Campbell
When Josie Mahoneyās best friend died in high school, his parents asked for her help withĢż
heir sonās social media.
Of course, she said yes, but she didnāt know where to start. Should they delete his account, losing access to the photos he posted and was tagged in? Or archive it as a digital memorial?
āIt was distressing,ā said Mahoney (InfoSciā25). āI think a clinic wouldāve been really great because at least thereās someone to talk to who knows what theyāre doing.ā
Now sheās one of those people: In her senior year, she joined CMDIās Digital Legacy Clinic, led by Jed Brubaker, an associate professor of information science.
āThe clinic is something you canāt bottleāthereās an energy there,ā she said. āItās the coolest class Iāve been a part of because of how it prepares us for the real world.ā
Part of that is how the course is structured. Brubaker builds in collaborative, project-based assignments that mimic the workplaces Mahoney and her classmates will graduate into. But it also comes from the market need for a solution to what happens to our data when we die.
Ģż
As an academic research collaborator at Facebook, Brubaker helped develop the platformās memorial account practices, but saw a much larger problem than just social mediaāphotos, videos, text messages, bank accounts and so on. Through a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant, he created a pro-bono, law school-style clinic to help people maintain their digital legacies.
āIt felt like a really unique moment where my research, teaching missions and a desire to do public service perfectly overlapped,ā he said.
āPre-mortemā support
Many clients come to the Digital Legacy Clinic in searchĢżof what students call āpre-mortemā supportāgetting a handle on what to do with their data now, so their families donāt have as much stress later.
ĢżĢżI appreciated the studentsā compassion and that theyāre thinking about ways to mitigate the overwhelm.ā
Corinna Robbins
That was the case with Corinna Robbins.
āI wonder what will happen to all the digital detritus that feels meaningful to us, and I wonder how my family will handle mine, or how I should handle my parentsā,ā Robbins said. āMy son is 16 right now. He may not be interested in my inner life at this moment, but I bet oneĢż
day he will be.ā
Unlike her mother, who had a drawer or two full of family photos, Robbins said she had thousands of unorganized photos on about 25 hard drives. That alone felt daunting, but equally disappointing was losing a blog she kept as a young adult, filled with personal essays and photography.
With help from the students, she learned about different cloud solutions to organize her photo collection, as wellĢżas the Wayback Machine, an online archive where sheĢżwas able to recover most of her blog.
āIt was lovely to be reconnected with those artifacts of my younger, former self,ā Robbins said. āI appreciated the studentsā compassion and that theyāre thinking about ways to mitigate the overwhelm.ā
Ģż
Ģż
Students in the Digital Legacy Clinic provide client support while researching how different platforms treat user data after death.Ģż
āA measly numberā
Part of the clinicās effort is dedicated to fieldwork, in which students review platformsā policies for specifics on user accounts and data after death. Theyāve found that only 13% of platforms offer functional support, āa measly number for something that will happen to 100% of us,ā Brubaker said.
The rest of their time is spent on client cases and building out the clinicās functionality. Jack Manning (CTDā24), an information science masterās student, built a chatbot to push studentsā boundaries, ensuring they encounter a range of situations and build their confidence for working with clients who may be grieving.
āThese are undergraduate students, not mental health professionals,ā he said. āAnd thereās potential for harm in those sensitive communications.ā
Manning, like Mahoney, joined the clinic in the fall and repeated the class last spring. While the first semester was spent developing the framework and assessing clientsā needs, the second focused on creating a knowledge base and onboarding systemālike the chatbotāto benefit future students.
As part of her portfolio project last fall, Mahoney focused on leadership and outreachāso on top of helpingĢżclients, she also developed a mini knowledge baseĢżwith resources to train future students to be sensitiveĢżin working with the public.
āNow I can say I was a team leader, a project manager and in charge of the timeline and what we wereĢżdoing,ā she said.
Students said that real-world emphasis shows up inĢżother ways, too.
āIāve learned how to work with people on different teams and bounce ideas off each other,ā said Oliver Kochenderfer (InfoSciā25). āIāve gotten so much teamwork experience, and itās been cool to have a teacher who acts as a manager guiding us toward one big goal.ā
Brubaker said itās important to remember that althoughĢżcollege is a time of exploration and experience, oneĢżof its main responsibilities is preparing students for lifeĢżafter graduation.
āI hope the clinic remains a place that has a public impact while also being a place for both my students and me to learn,ā he said. āI love taking humanistic or social science issues and thinking about how to implement that in the code. Weāre human-touch first. More than a solution, people need to be heard.ā
Learn more about the clinic
Hannah Stewart graduated from CMDI in 2019 with a degree in communication. She covers student news for the college.
Photographer Kimberly Coffin graduated from CMDI in 2018 with degrees in media production and strategic communication.