Month: January 2023

What is a digital identity?

Firstly, I want to share here my digital identity activity that I wrote up for the class discussion since it relates quite a bit to this question:
“It’s been very interesting to read everyone’s digital identity activities over the week. I have found a lot of the posts to be pretty insightful, coming at the topic in a way that I hadn’t considered and making insightful connections that were really useful to expanding my understanding. I hope to provide some insight of my own as I discuss the aspects of digital identity here that I was thinking about on my first reflection with the prompt. For me, digital identity is something that is interesting in the subtle ways in which how we construct and perform it differs from how we construct and perform our in-person identities. While there are a lot of similarities, I think that there is often a big difference in the role that intentionality plays when we are considering these identities. When we consider aspects of identity that a person may express in real life, such as how they dress or the language they use, these are certainly very important markers of identity, but the fact remains that while we do make these choices in how we do these things, we do not get the choice in whether or not we do them at all. We must get dressed in some manner in order to go out into the world, and we must make use of some kind of language in order to interact with it. In this sense, these compelling forces obscure the intentionality that we have when making these choices, because the choice to simply not  do them is not one that is available to us. In contrast, online identity is one that we are (typically) free to choose all aspects of; we can choose the aesthetics of our digital profiles in nearly every manner, including whether we want to make one at all. Thus, I think that the creation of digital identity is just as important as the ways and places in which we choose not to create digital identity. For example, those who have expressed concerns about privacy choosing not to with social networking sites that they have deemed as too public or untrustworthy, or for choosing not to engage with a certain digital network due to its reputation or use. Personally, I have chosen not to use Facebook for privacy reasons, and when I was younger and Snapchat was a bigger part of the lives of my peers, I would decline their requests that I start using the app and send messages with them since i generally thought that its was a little silly to be invested in the “streaks” that the app kept track of that were the driving force behind my friends asking me to get on the app. I think that these notable exclusions are just as relevant to my digital identity and the way that it is constructed as many of the inclusions of ways in which I did actively construct my digital identity. 

On a different note, when we are constructing an identity online, it is very often that we have the ability to partially or fully shroud ourselves in anonymity in a way that is difficult to do in real life. This allows people to construct identities that are very different from how they are in real life, but nonetheless still genuinely them. Let’s examine the case of LGBTQ+ people for example. When I was younger and living in Alberta I didn’t feel comfortable being out in my day to day life, but still wanted to express that aspect of myself. The anonymity of social media sites like twitter or instagram allowed me to celebrate those parts of myself in a manner that is entirely distinct from my real life performance of my identity, yet both were certainly mine. In this sense, both this digital persona and my real life persona were controlled and uncontrolled in their presentations of myself. In my real life I could talk about my personal life without much care for controlling the privacy of my identity, i.e. who I was, where I lived, etc, since that was already obvious to the people that I was interacting with, while I kept the parts of my life I was ready to share in a way that was connected to my real life controlled. On the flip side, I was able to freely discuss that aspect of myself online under the cover of anonymity, but there I had to be careful to keep any details about my real life private.”

To summarize some of the ideas that I was discussion above, I view digital identity as something that is fluid and multiple, where many different digital identities can exist for one person at once; the most obvious example of this is the differences between the personal digital identity and the professional digital identity, which is something that will be further discussed below. 

However, there exists another reading of the term “identity,” one which shifts away from the concept of the identity in the sociological sense, and more towards the digital identity as an identifier of a specific real world person. Operating under this definition, I would tend to consider digital identity as the collection of all things that someone does or has attached to them online that can be considered a part of their person or used to identify them. In this case, someone’s data becomes a much larger part of their identity, as it has the potential to identify in ways that are often unexpected, such as through search history or other similar trends in the data that are easy for computers to discern and identify people with, but impossible for humans. Overall, digital identity is a concept that is hard to pin down due to how much its definition depends on the specific context in which it is being applied. 

How do personal versus professional approaches to digital identity affect social media use?

As discussed in my last blog post, there are significant changes to the social scripts that are used when using social media as a professional networking tool vs as a personal tool. Additionally, as discussed above, some professional social media networking may be considered less as a choice that people make actively and more and more as a requirement for employment as time goes on. Thus, it often falls into the compulsory category I laid out earlier, and as such, has somewhat less influence on the creation of our digital identities as identity in the sociological sense. For me, I have a linkedin and indeed account, both of which are digital platforms meant to support those in the professional world, but I do not consider them as very core to my personal identity, even if I have dressed them in ways that identify them as mine. This is because I have been required to make use of these programs in the past when pursuing employment opportunities. These are very manicured and controlled, but not in a way in which they are meant to express who I am, my identity, but rather who I am as a worker, as someone who can help to raise productivity and bring in profit for potential employers. As discussed above, personal use of social media can be done in a way that is similarly managed down to the last detail, but in a way that is meant to be identity affirming. This identity affirming personal use can be very self directed under the cover of anonymity, or more performative, as described by Spracklen in the chapter on Social-Media and Identity Making.

How do digital identities converge in networked publics – what are the impacts and benefits?

Digital identities can converge in ways that are both positive and negative. Some people choose to try to keep their business networks and their personal networks separate, as they want to keep their manicured perfect business persona separate from their more genuine digital connections, while others may choose to use their personal networks to promote their business. I see the latter most often when the business in question is one owned by the individual that is integrating it in some manner into their personal networks; artists are a great example of this. I have friends who do art as a career, and they find it very fulfilling, affirming, and exciting to be sharing their professional works with friends, who likewise seem to enjoy being on the receiving end of these promotions for these works of art. However, I think that for a lot of people, professional digital identity is something that they would like to keep separate. Personally, I am one of these people. I think that under capitalism, many people do work that is unfulfilling, degrading, or otherwise alienating. As such, I make the active choice to keep my professional digital identity as far away from the identities that I have crafted that I see as a truer expression of myself. Personally, I hate that I must hide parts of myself that I would be otherwise embracing or celebrating in order to make myself more employable. 

Can a digital wallet provide trust in networked publics?

I think that digital wallets, much like any other kind or authentication service, work as a double edged sword. There are very important benefits to anonymity online, as I have discussed above, and I think that certifying all digital identities (identities in the sense of portfolios of identifying information and online profiles in this case) using practices like these hampers much if not all of those benefits. However, it is worth noting that this does mean that when people do act out in harmful ways that there can be consequences for that. This means that people can be more trusting in that the community can be protected from those that seek to cause them harm. However, I would argue that whatever trust is gained by turning online platforms into what amounts to digital versions of real life is lost by the course of action in the digital identifiers that were used to get there. People like me when I was younger and afraid to speak up for myself and be who I am would lose out on a place to explore those aspects that they may be afraid to discuss in a networked public in which they have their identity certified. I certainly think there are exceptions to this when not having these resources put into practice could result in grievous harm to people or communities, such as with the covid vaccination passes, but overall I think that unless otherwise necessary, it is best practice to avoid stripping out the potential for people to go about spaces anonymously.

First off, I want to say that i will be using they/them pronouns or their name to refer to the author, since I didn’t see them specify any pronouns on their blog. Regarding Asia’s post here, I broadly agree with much of what they wrote. The concept of public communication being a double edged sword is something that I touched upon in my post, as well as the concept of networking online allowing for people to feel more comfortable with self-disclosure. I also tend to agree with their writings on why we engage in networked publics, though I did not place the emphasis that this writer did on the overall importance of social media networking. While it is certainly true that social media networking has been more and more important as time has gone on these past few years, especially in light of the covid pandemic, it has been my experience that there are people who still greatly value in-person networking, and, to use the example that they used, those who still greatly value the effort people will go to to drop off a resume in person rather than applying online with a few clicks. The last thing that I wanted to reflect on in this post is regarding the line “Thus, networking using social media is not a passive experience of hitting ‘follow’ and ‘follow back’ but an active iteration of searching, communicating, and collaborating with others in the network.” While I think that the bulk of productive networking could certainly be described like this, I think that the follow and follow back element is still an important part of the networking process. Specifically, to me, it seems to me like it would fall into the category of the connectivity layer of networking (very weak ties) as described in the reading by Rajagopal et al.. I think that the use of the friend-ing/following/connecting etc tools provided by the social network is often the first step in the networking process, being the initial creation of an (albeit very tenuous) connection that can be built upon and activated later on. Overall I think that Asia offered well thought out and insightful reflections, and I am thankful to them for sharing their analysis and letting me share my own thoughts about what they wrote.

Next, I want to discuss my thoughts about Catriona’s post. I think that while a lot of what she wrote about how different social media services can serve different purposes in terms of networking, I think that having linkedin as the definitive best one for networking isn’t quite true. While for a lot of the more “professional” business world it may be the best, I think that alternatives like Instagram of Discord may be best for certain careers, specifically with work like fashion in Instagram’s case, and esports or other internet-hobby related content creation like YouTube in Discord’s case. I have friends that do work in these fields, and they tend to use the social medias I mentioned as their primary tools for networking, outside of making use of in person connections. I think that setting up a paradigm that has these sites as inherently worse in terms of networking could implicitly devalue the work that takes place using these sites as the primary site of networking. In my experience/opinion, many social networking sites can be used for networking, all located within their own specific professional subcultures of those that makes use of them.

Networking using social media can mean many different things to different people, and even different things to the same person within different contexts, i.e. networking for their career vs their hobby. I want to start off by saying that as an person with asd, I will have a fairly unique experience with networking, as social interactions already tend to be intellectualized, so I end up in the mindset of “active networking” even when that isn’t really what other people are doing, simply by the nature of how I as a person understand and navigate these social spaces. As such, what I view as under the networking label, others might not, but that’s okay to me.
To me, most social interaction falls into one of two categories: I am discussing something I love with someone I know or am comfortable with, and all other social situations. When I am talking about my specific interests with people that I know want to hear me talk about those things, I can just let myself talk without having to engage in the constant self-analysis and monitoring that mark most other interactions in my life. When I am talking with people who I don’t know I plan to already follow a more structured script and focus on just making the connection in a more “professional” sense. Most of my networking in social media follows similarly.
On social media platforms, I tend to interact in a very personable manner with those that I am already close to, and in a far more professional or calculated manner with those that I am not. To me, networking on social media is quite similar to networking in person; if there is someone that I happen to find myself in the same space as I will intentionally create some of those “weaker links” with them, as that is what I have internalized as the right social script to follow in these situations. Something else I wanted to touch on was regarding how the reading by Rajagopal et al. described the lack of ways that technology and social media networking applications can facilitate the differences between their three different levels of lengths. While it is true that very few social media sites have ways that help to make the level of these connections explicit, it is also the case that there is nothing in our real life networking and social spaces that makes the levels of these links explicit either. The level of the link is all contextual within the interactions of the people involved in that link. If someone is a strong link in a network, then both individuals will understand and recognize that to varying degrees based on the social markers that both people use in their communication, like the language used, the rate of communication over time, tone, etc.. This works the same way in real life as it does in social media interactions. As such, I find the author’s implication that these technologies could be improved by making the levels of these links more explicit within the technology fascinating.

As I began to describe above, there are a few ways that we are motivated to involve ourselves in networked publics, ranging from simply believing that it’s the right thing to do in the social situation in which one finds themselves, to seeking out people who share hobbies and build those networked connections for more personal reasons, to building a network of people with the motivation of moving up in their careers, to people who simply want to get to know as many different people from as many different walks of life to learn as much as they can in their life. The motivations and benefits relating to each of these specific examples of networks/subnetworks are all varied, but each involves interacting with others to learn new things and experience the world from the perspective of another person with whom you relate in some way. The motivations that drive participation in networked publics are as many and varied as the possible motivations for people engaging in any social activity. Again, this specific belief/understanding of these concepts of mine could be related to my own specific experience with how I view and understand social interaction and the motivations behind it, but I am still resolute in the my own conceptualization of how these social constructions of networking and interacting are motivated and brought about by the people that participate in them.

There are of course risks and rewards to this kind of public communication. The most obvious of each comes from the fact that it is public; that is, public communication allows for others to witness or even join in to the conversations and interactions that take place. This is a double edged sword, because that ability for others to glean information from and join in on the conversation can both lead to more in depth or constructive conversations, or allow for the information that if being discussed to be abused by others. For example, by writing about my ASD here on this public forum, I may be reducing my ability for employment once I graduate, since many workplaces are still reluctant to hire people with ASD. However, by having these discussions in the public space we allow for people to see and consider these perspectives, which can contribute to the de-stigmatization of things like ASD. In this sense, by writing about myself in this manner here, I am both increasing and decreasing the likelihood that my diagnosis will have a negative impact on my future. As such, I think that having public conversations about things is a great way to help move society forward, and construct new knowledge in a manner that allows for input from all people. I do still think people are entitled to their own privacy though, and I am aware that my own discussion of my experiences with ASD may contribute to how other people with ASD are stereotyped or interpreted, like in how the reading about networked privacy discusses.