What does my Digital Identity Look Like?

This blog post will further explore Personal Learning Networks specifically Digital Identities. For more information on Personal Learning Networks, please visit Blog #1.Ā 

 

Digital Identity Exercise:

For this exercise, I will be reflecting on my controlled and uncontrolled social media presence on public networks. As I am referred to as both my legal name (Kei) and nickname (KC), I will be diving into each to find my digital identity. What is a Digital Identity? First I will define the term Identity. Identity is you! This includes qualities, beliefs, and being distinguishable among others; meaning, a digital identity (DI) is your online presence. When completing this exercise, I hoped to see a theme with ā€˜Keiā€™ populating my professional digital identity and for ā€˜KCā€™ to populate my personal digital identity.Ā Ā 

Results:

When searching up both names, I found that my online identity was fairly private, only populating my professional identity when searching ā€˜Kei Watsonā€™ (ex. ā€˜Kei Watsonā€™ populated a UVIC article in regards to my Co-op). Further, when searching ā€˜KCā€™ I found that other content with the name ā€˜KCā€™ outweighed/were more popular searches, therefore, I did not show up. However, a trend I found was searching my name with a hobby resulted in my digital identity to be more public.Ā 

Now we are going to address the following questions:

  • How do personal versus professional approaches to digital identity affect social media use? and,
  • How do digital identities converge in networked publics – what are the impacts and/or benefits

Personal and professional digital identity plays a large role in social media usage. From personal experience, I use my personal social media (Instagram) more than professional social media (LinkedIn and Facebook). On my personal social media, I monitor who is able to see my content allowing for more flexibility in my posts. Posts are generally unfiltered therefore I ensure my privacy settings are properly set and are aware of my followers who can access posts. However, as time passes, our personal accounts are becoming more professional therefore more accounts under our name are created. This expands our digital identity on these public platforms. For example, many of us, including myself have made ā€œfinsta accountsā€ as our personal accounts have become more professional. On the contrary, my professional social media is more public and for networking purposes. I allow users to be able to search for me and contact me if they wish to network, unlike my personal DI. This is a major benefit in DI converged in networked publics however, it can play a major risk if personal DI is not monitored correctly. For example, social media and networked publics are essentially a ā€˜pre-interviewā€™ meaning, that employers can search you up and see the public content. Therefore, if not appropriately monitored, inappropriate posts can risk the chances of being selected.