Browse Theses

Going through a break-up can be difficult. Break-ups are emotionally fraught; two people have to untangle their lives from each other. Research has paid attention to the implications of a break-up on the involved parties' mental and emotional well-being and identified best practices for healing and growing from a break-up. However, these findings and practices are not well suited to social media because of how data represent our lives. As a result, what social media users are left with in the wake of a break-up are features designed to encourage connection and reminiscence when those things may not be appropriate or desired. In other words, people know how to break-up offline; however, they – and by extension, social media algorithms that recommend or remind – cannot accurately represent the experience of breaking up. In turn, the lack of understanding of how to "break-up" online leaves people having bad experiences with no remedy for preventing them after experiencing a break-up.In this dissertation, I explore how people managed their data in the wake of a break-up to create new, post-break-up identities. My dissertation work spans three studies. In the first study, I explore people's upsetting encounters with algorithmically curated content about their break-up. These encounters occur partly because of data remnants that remain after a break-up – the pictures, posts, and connections that persist past the end of the relationship.In the second study, I investigate how people make decisions about their data and enact them through data management features. As part of these data management practices, people create post-break-up identities as they decide what to do (or not to do) with the data remnants from their relationship. These identities are akin to exhibitions, with people exhibiting different curatorial philosophies toward their data remnants.In the third study of my dissertation, I interview couples who have not broken up yet to explore what data management practices they might use depending on how their relationships end. From these interviews, I identify design implications that could assist people in better managing their identities after a break-up and limit the impact of insensitive algorithmic curation.My dissertation makes theoretical, empirical, and design contributions. Theoretically, my dissertation extends Hogan's (2010) identity exhibition to account for the human as a curator of online identity. Empirically, my dissertation contributes to our understanding of break-ups and their representations in sociotechnical systems, which sit in conversation with HCI work around life transitions. Finally, my dissertation identifies design implications to better support individuals going through break-ups, implications that could support other life transitions as well.