{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,28]],"date-time":"2026-07-28T22:58:45Z","timestamp":1785279525709,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":65,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1785283200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Genet."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Persistent digital presence now routinely outlives biological death through memorialized profiles, algorithmic \u201cmemories,\u201d AI-mediated avatars, or biobank reanalysis. This perspective argues that decisions about such posthumous data\u2014including postmortem genomic data\u2014should be grounded in a glocally situated, relational view of personhood and practice, rather than in one-size-fits-all, individual-only rules. A small shared vocabulary is first proposed for use across disciplines: digital afterlife, digital immortality, posthumous lifespan, digital remains, and digital death. Digital death is treated phenomenologically as a lived, relational process: a hybrid online\u2013offline experience in which dying, mourning, remembrance, and legacy unfold across digital and non-digital contexts. Second, it is argued that selves persist through relations, roles, and traces and that digital and genomic data amplify this relationality. Posthumous decisions, therefore, affect kin and communities and call for relational, kin-sensitive consent rather than static, individual authorizations. Third, a glocal lens is advanced: digital and data infrastructures always meet local death systems\u2014institutions, rites, beliefs, and moral orders\u2014that refract global capabilities into self-limiting \u201cboundary solutions.\u201d To make this usable for genetics and allied fields, a brief action triage is outlined\u2014focusing on stakes, relational radius, local death system, and time frame\u2014and illustrate with a posthumous variant re-analysis\/return-of-results scenario to help choose the least intrusive viable pathway. While approximate, such staged, glocally attuned practice can reduce foreseeable harm and support ethically coherent, clinically workable, and culturally credible uses of posthumous data.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fgene.2026.1885207","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,28]],"date-time":"2026-07-28T22:10:20Z","timestamp":1785276620000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Digital death and posthumous data: a glocal, relational perspective"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Adela","family":"Toplean","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest","place":["Bucharest, Romania"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"635","DOI":"10.3390\/socsci12110635","article-title":"Digital s\u00e9ance: fabricated encounters with the dead","volume":"12","author":"Altaratz","year":"2023","journal-title":"Soc. 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