Dying Digitally: Rethinking the Afterlife in the Global South

This paper addresses the under-theorized issue of the digital afterlife in the Information Systems (IS) field with a specific focus on the Global South. While digital death increasingly intersects with cultural, ethical, and technological domains, mainstream IS research has largely avoided the topic and its complexities, often viewing death as a taboo topic. The paper explores how Western-centric digital afterlife services overlook cultural, infrastructural, and economic realities of Global South users, contributing to digital exclusion. Drawing from thanatology and sociotechnical systems theory, the paper critically analyzes posthumous digital identity governance, data vulnerability, and ethical concerns surrounding persistent online profiles and emerging technologies. In response, the paper introduces the Socially Aware Digital Death (SADD) framework, a culturally responsive, ethically grounded model that integrates social awareness, digital literacy, ethical considerations, and shared accountability to address digital death challenges. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda based on user typologies and the SADD framework, and makes a call for more inclusive platform design, legal reform, and localized digital legacy tools, challenging IS paradigms to ethically engage with death and recognize the agency of Global South users in shaping their digital legacies.