Month: May 2022

How Privacy Has Impacted Digital Technologies

For this assignment, I was in a group with Michael and Agia. We were tasked with discussing how the issue of privacy has impacted digital technologies. Michael is discussing control of data, and services we select and how that affects student privacy. Agia is discussing Zooming, and policy supporting privacy. I will be discussing privacy training and privacy breaches.

Privacy training is something in which I have personal experience. Users must be educated to protect themselves from threats (Kalloniatis, 2021). Many social media sites will walk you through their privacy settings, so you know how to protect your information. Some people must protect other people’s data, such as in the fields of healthcare and elections. At my place of work, we must undergo confidential information management training, and we have to recertify regularly through an online module. Gamification is one way that has been suggested to make privacy training more engaging (Kalloniatis, 2021). I think this is true if solid instructional design principles are still used.

Privacy breaches are something no one wants to handle, and “certain characteristics of SNS open up possibilities for new kinds of privacy breaches. These breaches primarily result from the fact that users reveal detailed information to the public and map their real-life social relationships more explicitly than they would in emails or on public forums” (Gurses et al., 2008). First, users must learn to protect their data. Social media sites like Facebook offer different privacy settings to decide how much information to share publicly. However, what happens when accounts are hacked? There are services that will help you if you happen to experience online identity theft, and in some cases a hacked account will just be dealt with by changing a password. Users have to accept that anything they put online could be compromised and they should manage their online identity with that in mind.

References

Gurses, S., Rizk, R., & Gunther, O. (2008). Privacy Design in Online Social Networks: Learning from Privacy Breaches and Community Feedback. 11.

Kalloniatis, C. (2021). The Role of Gamification in Software Development Lifecycle. BoD – Books on Demand.

Unit 3 reflection on structures and my DIDP

I think the impact of different structures on my digital identity and digital presence plan is that I will have to define which platforms use which type of structure. There are the main structures, and then there are also hybrid structures that should be considered. For example, in the group-set structure, “communities of interest gather due to shared interests, and typically engage in more or less formal ways. They are often bound by interest in a topic more than by the group itself, though this may change over time” (Anderson and Dron, 2014, p. 80). Some of my groups on Discord and Slack may fall into this category, because they are based on shared interests and have rules and structure to them.

When considering different structures, I wonder if different structures facilitate a different identity and presence. When there are rules in place, then your digital identity and presence can be shaped by those rules. For example, if a group had a rule that said you couldn’t talk about the colour red and that was a big part of your identity, then your identity in that group would be a lot different than a place where you could speak openly about the colour red.

References

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2014). Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781927356807.01

My Visual Network Map

Heather’s Visual Network Map

This is a map of my visual network. I chose to keep it quite vague and used platforms instead of group names. It is interesting that different types of connections are connected to their own digital platforms. I also have more connections on some platforms that aren’t connected to my friends, school cohort, or work colleagues. Discord is the only platform where I don’t feel particularly connected to anyone in the communities I am a part of. Of course, other platforms have varying levels of connection as well. Overall I usually like to compartmentalize different kinds of connections and digital environments allow me to do that.

My Digital Identity and Digital Presence Plan

Students “must be effective architects, narrators, curators, and inhabitants of their own digital lives” (Campbell, 2009, p. 59). Royal Roads has given me this opportunity by giving me a blog that I can write in during my program and take with me when I am done. The course I am completing now has challenged me to increase my public presence on social media. My overall goal and purpose for cultivating my digital presence and identity is to connect with my friends, family, and peers by sharing pieces of information about my life and interests on social media platforms. I also want to be able to ask questions and obtain information from my peers.

I will connect with others, and share and obtain information, by posting regularly on Facebook (private account) and liking and commenting on other people’s posts; posting regularly on LinkedIn (public account) and liking and commenting on other people’s posts when appropriate, and looking for more people in my field to connect with on that website; reading and contributing on the 2022 MALAT cohort Slack group; conversing with others on Line messenger; consuming information and asking questions on Discord; creating shared documents in Google Docs and discussing them over Zoom; and writing blog posts on WordPress and commenting on my cohort’s blogs.

I am used to working with social media, so I don’t think I have many knowledge or skills gaps. I plan to be cautious when posting publicly on LinkedIn because according to boyd (2010), characteristics of networked publics are persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability. I want to make sure I present a positive digital identity and presence to the public.

The measures of success for this project will mainly be that I post, like, comment, and converse consistently. I will look at the number of connections I add on LinkedIn, and I will track the number of likes and impressions on my posts to see what kinds of content are the most popular.

I look forward to the results of this experiment.

References

boyd, D. (2010). Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 39–58). New York, NY: Routledge.

Campbell, G. (2009). A Personal Cyberinfrastructure. Educause Review, 44(5), 58–59.