Carl Öhman was an OII DPhil Student.
Carl Öhman
Former DPhil Student
Profile
Carl Öhman was a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, supervised by Professor Luciano Floridi. He holds a research grant from technology doctor Marcus Wallenberg’s foundation for education in international industrial enterprise.
His interests fall at the intersection between economic sociology and ethics. More specifically, Carl’s research looks at the ethical challenges regarding commercial management of ‘digital human remains’, data left by deceased users on the Internet.
Carl graduated from Oxford 2016 with the award-winning thesis The Political Economy of Death in the Age of Information: A Critical Approach to the Digital Afterlife Industry. Prior to the OII, he studied for a B.A. in Sociology and Comparative literature at Uppsala University Sweden, where he explored autobiographical strategies among social media users, and the political economy of Twitter hashtags.
Research Interests
Research interests: Digital Afterlife, Death, Immortality, Ethics, Economic sociology, Critical theory, Informational privacy, Personal identity, Ontology.
News
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Demise of Big Tech platforms like Facebook would pose serious risks to data privacy with damaging social and economic consequences, new study finds
11 August 2020
With Big Tech platforms like Facebook hosting vast volumes of user data, new analysis from experts at the University of Oxford provides a stark warning about the risks to personal information if these companies were to shut down.
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Digital remains should be treated like physical ones
20 April 2018
Our internet activity - commonly referred to as digital remains, should be treated with the same care and respect as physical remains, according to Oxford University research.
Press
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Facebook stranglehold makes it ‘too big to fail’
12 August 2020 The Times
Facebook has become so powerful that its collapse would have "catastrophic social and economic consequences", researchers believe.
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What would happen if Facebook shut down? Scientists analyse data privacy risks
11 August 2020 Press Association
The fall of social media giants like Facebook could open the floodgates on data privacy issues, scientists have warned.
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Facebook and other tech giants ‘too big to fail’
11 August 2020 The Guardian
Like banks in the 2008 financial crisis, Facebook and other tech giants are “too big to fail”, according to research from Oxford University that calls for new regulations to protect users, and society, in the event of a possible collapse.
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Demise of Facebook ‘would pose serious risk to people’s privacy’
11 August 2020 The Telegraph
Breaking up big social media companies like Facebook would put billions of people's personal information at serious risk, a leading Oxford think-tank has said.
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The social media giants are becoming digital graveyards
6 January 2020 CityAM
In the final weeks of 2019, Twitter announced an imminent cull of inactive accounts. Desultory users risked losing their Twitter handles and having to start building their social media presence all over again.
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Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever
18 October 2018 MIT Technology Review
In a paper published in Nature Human Behavior earlier this year, ethicists Carl Öhman and Luciano Floridi from the Oxford Internet Institute argue that we need an ethical framework for the burgeoning digital afterlife industry.
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What happens to your digital remains after you die?
23 April 2018 Hindustan Times
Internet activity lives on long after a person dies and firms such as Facebook and experimental start-ups have sought to monetise this content by allowing people to socialise with the dead online.
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The Digital Afterlife is Open for Business. But It Needs Rules.
18 April 2018 Futurism
No one is quite sure how to navigate the little-charted territory of the digital afterlife.
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‘Digital remains’ deserve same treatment as archaeological artifacts, say Oxford academics
18 April 2018 The Telegraph
Our internet activity will live on long after we die, yet these intimate digital details are granted little protection from companies hoping to cash in on the cyber afterlife.
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Deceased Data: Should Your Online Remains Be Treated Like Physical Remains?
18 April 2018 Technology Networks
From live-streaming funerals to online memorial pages and even chat-bots that use people’s social media footprints’ to act as online ghosts, the digital afterlife industry (DAI) has become big business.