PLN – Public Communication, and Digital Identity
Before starting this class my social media usage was mainly used for connecting with friends and for my own entertainment. And it’s very easy to go on this way and forget that others can see how you interact online and what kind of a person you seem to be. Going through this week’s reading helped remind me that social media is an extremely powerful tool that can provide so many opportunities that can change your life for the better or worse. You never know when a potential employer could be looking at the things you post or even the videos you’ve liked. Social media has the capability to be used for so much good, and networking is one of the new ways I’ve learned it can help me.
A Personal Learning Network, or PLN, is pretty much the network of people and resources you reach out and connect with to help you learn. Rajagopal et al. (2012) describes it as something you create intentionally, from a mix of connections with some being stronger, some that may be helpful one day that you work towards building up, and reach out to when your interested in learning something new.
What does it mean to network using social media?
To network using social media means to go out of your way to make connections with people you think you can learn from, whether that be a close friend, colleague, or even a random famous person you look up to. Networking can happen wherever. Rajagopal et al. (2012) describe the key to networking as three ongoing habits, building connections before you need them, maintaining them, and activating them when you actually want to learn something. What surprised me is that it’s not your close friends teaching you new things, and actually it’s the random accounts and people you barely talk to that show you stuff outside what you’re normally surrounded with, while your close connections are the ones you more so collaborate with (Rajagopal et al., 2012).
How are we motivated to participate in networked publics?
I think people are motivated to participate in networking to learn more about their interests and discover who they can be as a person. When you’re connected with people who have similar interests or doing things you want to learn, you end up learning way more than you would have on your own, and you can actually get feedback instead of just guessing (Rajagopal et al., 2012). Another aspect of networking is how the communities you spend time in online end up shaping who you are. Spracklen (2015) talks about online spaces being like any other place people hang out, and allowing others to have a place they feel they belong.
For me, I get my motivation to network with others from a drive to make as many connections as possible and set a good impression of myself so that when a time comes around where I might need to ask someone I don’t know too well for a piece of advice, I can feel comfortable and confident in whatever it may be.
What are the risks and rewards of public communication?
Public communication allows so many rewards, some of which being opportunity; having an online presence and communicating allows you to be visible and get seen by employers, like-minded people, and communities.
Another reward public communications provides is visibility; as when not being online, your thoughts and ideas can only go so far and when being online, you have the chance to meet thousands of people with endless new ideas that can help you learn more and challenge your own thinking.
Some risks public communication brings are things like not having full control; as mentioned by Boyd (2012), privacy is networked, not individual, meaning that even if you try and make your accounts private, every tag, post, or comment about you still affects your image and builds on your reputation.
Another risk that comes with public communication is that everything you post online is pretty much there forever. Trying to delete something doesn’t really do much as someone couldve already screenshotted or shared it, as well as most apps having documents on everything their users have once posted. A way to think about it is like the things you posted at 16 can still speak for you years later, even though the you back then and the you now are basically two different people. The internet doesn’t really care that you’ve grown, it just shows whoever’s looking whatever it saved.
What is digital identity?
A digital identity is the version of you that exists online. Your identity is made up of everything you’ve ever posted, commented on, or liked, but also everything other people have posted about you (Stoller, 2016). The part that stands out to me is that people can now see the videos you’ve liked, leading to people making assumptions of what kind of a person you are strictly by what kind of videos you choose to like.
The U of G Library (2021) describes it as the trail you leave behind through everything you do online, including things you don’t even think about such as accounts you made when you were younger or photos you get tagged in.
How do personal versus professional approaches to digital identity affect our social media?
A personal approach to digital identity is all about you as a person and what you enjoy. How you spend your time, your humour, your likes and dislikes, the stuff you’d share with friends without thinking. A professional approach is kind of the opposite, where everything you post is about showing your skills and building a reputation that you’d want a boss or employer to see. These two different sides of you can start to clash when what feels like a normal weekend hiking trip post to you and your friends might read completely differently to an employer who searches your name before an interview. And once you realize that can happen, it totally changes how you use social media, as you start to second-guess posts and comments that you never would have cared about before.
How do digital identities converge in networked publics, and what are the impacts or benefits?
Digital identities can converge as mentioned by Boyd, (2012) because the digital media is open to everyone including your boss, family, friends and whoever wants to see it. Because of this a downside can be created because what you used to post for just your friends and family to see, now has to be considered from your bosses point of view and vice versa. Ultimately, you lose the ability to have a healthy work/life balance as the two start to merge into each other.
A benefit this can bring is that it forces you to truly be yourself and not have multiple personalities. If everyone is seeing what’s going on in your life, then you don’t have any room to be putting on a fake persona and can be your authentic self.
References:
boyd, d. (2012). Networked privacy. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 348–350. https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/networked
Rajagopal, K., Joosten-ten Brinke, D., Van Bruggen, J., & Sloep, P. B. (2012). Understanding personal learning networks: Their structure, content and the networking skills needed to optimally use them. First Monday, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v17i1.3559
Spracklen, K. (2015). Identity-making and social media. In Digital leisure, the internet and popular culture (pp. 94–112). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137405876_6
Stoller, E. (2016). Eric Stoller – What is digital identity? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/u0RryRbJza0
U of G Library. (2021, August 17). What is digital identity? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGV5OBa938I
I really liked your discussion on how digital identity includes both what we post and what others post about us! Your point about old content impacting our online reputation is especially important and shows why it’s valuable to think carefully about what we share in networked publics! Thank you for sharing!!