Published: April 10, 2019

On April 9Facebook COO Sheryl Sandbergannounced new guidelines for memorial legacy accounts, and those changes were directly informed by research from ATLAS PhD candidate Katie Gach, along withher faculty advisor,Jed Brubaker,an assistant professor inthe Information Science Department whose PhD dissertation resulted in Legacy Contact.

Katie Gach

Katie Gach

Alegacy contactis the person afacebook user designatesto look after his or herFacebookaccount ifit's memorialized.

"It’s rare for a junior PhD researcher to have their research impact anything at this scale," says Gach, a digital ethnographer studying human experiences on social platforms."I’m so grateful to Dr. Brubaker and the memorialization team at Facebook for trusting me with a piece of this important work."

Through her researchevaluatingFacebook's Legacy Contact, Gachfindsways to build compassion and empathy into social media. During the project,Gach completed interviews with Legacy Contact usersand provided analyses to help the Facebook team understand how to help people find the connections they need in times of grief.

Gach will continueher researchthis summer as a researchinternat Facebook.