digital identity and presence

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 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.

Resident-Visitor Typology Map

Figure 1

Resident-Visitor Typology Map

Above is the map of my technology use based on the resident-visitor typology. I am usually very private in online spaces, although that is now changing with the MALAT WordPress blogs. I am also interested in becoming more of a resident on LinkedIn, but I am having trouble trying to figure out what to post that would be valuable for myself and my readers.

Although I have private accounts on services such as Line and Facebook, I put them on the resident side because they still leave a footprint and they are “a place, perhaps like a park or a building in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with whom they can share information about their life and work” (White & Cornu, 2011). I think the public and private dichotomy of technology is not fully addressed by the resident-visitor typology. Residents can have private footprints and private spaces “where the distinction between online and off–line is increasingly blurred” (White & Cornu, 2011). Although it is private, I am not a visitor. I feel that engaging in private spaces allows group discussion and development of ideas without exposing yourself to the public and the potential safety concerns that come with that.

References

White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i9.3171