Paper details
| Paper authors | Kristin Bergtora Sandvik |
| In panel on | Interrogating Humanitarian Technology: Critical Perspectives on Data |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
The management of digital identities after death is becoming a significant governance challenge for the global technology sector, with the appearance of thousands of ghost-accounts every day. Historically, effective, safe and dignified dead-body management (DBM) in the context of disasters and wars has been an important task for the humanitarian sector. With the accelerating digitization of beneficiary bodies, new challenges arise with respect to how humanitarianism will grapple with the advent of ‘ghost-beneficiaries’ in the context of human suffering, de-territorialized digital ‘global emergency citizenships’ and the institutional interest in the politics of numbers. This paper begins to articulate and unpack digital dead body management (DDBM) as an emergent challenge for the humanitarian sector.
