Category: edci338

How does social media engage communications? 

Social media engages communications by its very nature as a social platform. Social media provides individuals the ability to create and proliferate a digital identity, and through their digital identity, they can also interact with others digital identities. This process is a unique method of communication as it allows for two people to interact with only one of them needing to be “present.” That is, I can interact with people based on what they have already done on (almost) any given social media by looking at their profile, which allows for a unique kind of asynchronous unilateral communication that is only made possible by social media and the internet. On top of that, many social media platforms build in systems of direct messaging or commenting on posts and profiles that allows for bi/multilateral real time communication through the use of text chat, voice recordings, emoji/emoticons, and the sharing of other posts from the social media. Part of what makes this so revolutionary in terms of how we as a people communicate is that it gives far more opportunity than ever before for people to organize around things without the impetus of geography. Previously, it was very difficult to organize widespread movements since there was a limit to how fast information could spread, and how fast any 2 individuals could reasonably communicate. But now that internet access is more widespread, even into developing nations, people are able to get involved in the global community and communicate, organize, and push for change in revolutionary new ways and speeds.

How does social media challenge communications? 

However, one drawback of online communication and social media digital identities are often that it is just as easy to fracture communities into smaller tribes of people over superficial differences as it is to rally them together into an organized global movement. Since posts exist in perpetuity, they may overstay their context and now have a different implication, which can cause disagreement between people. Additionally, since most social media communication is built using text chat and designed both systemically and by the individual to craft and uphold a particular digital identity, a lot of nuance from people being more expressive of their beliefs and from other communication aspects like tone or body language are lost. Additionally, we have to consider the aspects of privacy and performativity that online communication often entails, particularly in the professional setting, as discussed in previous posts.

Is it inclusive? 

In this dialectic of social media being a powerful community building tool as well as a platform that often lacks nuance and stokes the flames of interpersonal conflict, we can uncover another dialectic regarding its inclusivity. On the one hand, since it is indisputably such a powerful tool for the creation of community, the fact of the matter is that no matter who you are or what you believe, there is a community out there that you will be able to feel at home with. Socially, this can have both positive and negative impacts; take my previous examples of social media as a tool for queer people who are unable to or currently too uncomfortable to come out publicly finding a space online to explore their identity in a positive, constructive, safe and healthy manner, and contrast that with the role that social media played in organizing the Q-Anon movement and subsequently the storming of the capitol building on Jan 6th. On the other hand, since social media does strip much communication of its nuance, it can be additionally difficult for neurodivergent people to navigate the space, and disagreements that could be hashed out peacefully in-person blow up into huge bouts and can fracture communities and organizations and leave people feeling excluded for what amounts to minor, harmless differences. That isn’t to say that this is the rule however; there are plenty of spaces online that work to be more inclusive in both of these metrics, with the usage of things like tone indicators, which serve to clarify and make more explicit the tone that the author means for a message to have, and communities online that are able to resist self-destructing in the say that so many other online communities do. 

Does your PLN amplify the views of others? 

I definitely like to think that my personal learning network amplifies the views of others, as I want to be the best person that I can be, and a big part of that comes from listening to people that have life experience I do not. I don’t just take it as gospel, I always try to contextualize it and consider it on my own terms, and sometimes even disagree outright, but I always work to be respectful of people and listen to what they have to say. However, I am aware that I have my own biases, and limitations on my own thoughts, ideas, and perceptions based on my positionality; as a white person, even if I seek out and listen to POC, I will never have a truly complete understanding of what it is like to live as a POC in the world that we inhabit, for example. As hard as I work, I will never be able to see things truly objectively, and even if I could, I’m not sure that would even be the best way to go about things. I am sure that there are plenty of people and viewpoints out there that I couldn’t even conceive of, and may never end up interacting with due to the limits that I have. But I do my best, and I am only human, so I would say that my PLN amplifies the view of others about as well as could be expected for any community that works to improve itself. 

The policies of employer social media communication expectations. 

Personally, I think that social media communication policy should work to prevent employees from doing harm to other people online, but after that, that’s it. I don’t think that my employer has any right to moderate my behaviour outside of the office as long as I am not doing anybody harm, even if there may be things that I do that are “unprofessional.” I think that the concept of professionalism is something that works to alienate people and while I can certainty understand that being polite and cordial to people is good, and acting professional in that manner is something that can be very useful in many situations, I think professionalism as a state of behaviour that must be adhered to is detrimental to humanity on the whole. To be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be treating other people with respect and kindness, which I am still firmly in support of, but rather that the reduction of the self into an instrument to be wielded by an employer or a customer kind of professionalism is something that has no place in the ideal world. As such, I don’t want an employer putting limits on my ‘self,’ especially when I am no longer on company time. 

How to better use social media to build PLN – Influencers & Commentators 

Related to my previous post, I think that a great way to go about this is to seek out pre-existing communities within the ‘genre’ of whatever thing/topic it is that you are looking to expand your PLN in regards to, and social media is a great place to do this, due to its community building attributes as discussed above. Beyond that, I think that using social media to expand your PLN is very similar to how you would go about it in real life; that is, you ‘meet people’ by seeing their posts or profiles, then reach out by interacting with their posts or profiles, and build that connection using the communication methods above. The uniqueness comes from the fact that you also have a profile through which others can reach out to you, so making sure that you are accessible through that avenue as well is also a good idea.

Having previously built and sold personal computers, I have some experience in using social media to launch a campaign of sorts. In this specific market, it’s far less important who I am as an individual when looking to engage with the community compared to other communities. The most important part is being upfront with the computer that is being sold. Listing specifications in detail and accurately is the best way to make a good impression. I would make posts on social media made for buying/selling/trading such Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, and EBay, and I would make sure that I was quick to reply to people asking questions about the computers and people who were expressing interest in buying them. I was able to build connections with people that reached out in response to my ads, because I was selling locally within my neighborhood, and I would also often install the PC in their house and set it up for them, as well as give the older folks that were buying the computers I was building some brief lessons on the technology. Being professional at the outset when people didn’t really know me and then transitioning to a more personable approach once I had established a rapport with my customers allowed for me to establish firm connections for people who would come back to me later on if something broke down or if they knew someone else who was interested in buying a computer. The most important part, though unintended at the time, was that I was actually establishing a PLN with these customers of mine. The questions that they would ask, as well as the recommendations and requests they would make of me when we were discussing the computers taught me a lot about how people learn about technology, especially those of older generations. I was able to apply this knowledge in my interactions when I was looking to sell to people in the future in order to help them make a more informed decision and to help clear up any confusion when it came to all the technical jargon that computers make use of.
Though not directly applicable in the example of my experience outlined above, I think that it is very important to engage with any existing community around the topic that is chosen for the social media campaign, not just because making use of that pre-existing community can save a lot of time and energy, and help spread the network and campaign further, but also because it is the respectful thing to do; greeting people that are already in a space that you are moving into is just the courteous thing to do, and not doing it may and up severely hampering the campaign that is being ran, since you might end up at odds with the pre-existing community otherwise.

Explore the videos provided and reflect on the themes of a PLN in professional capacity.

PLNs are a very valuable resource and source of lifelong learning that can provide and empower connections to help propel people forward in both their careers and personal lives. As written last week in my blog post, when using PLNs as a professional resource, people have to act professionally, following the (often unwritten, though sometimes explicit) social rules that “professionalism” within their profession dictates. This often means that people have to pay more attention to the language they use, the people they choose to associate with, the way they present themselves and their work, and more. In my (admittedly limited) experience, professional connections can also be colored by a certain kind of transactionalism, where people expect that others share and provide value to their network just as much as they receive value from it, though this isn’t always the case.

Which social media platforms are beneficial in education?

As I have said before, I think that there is value in almost every social media for some kind of connection building to expand a PLN. Similarly, I think that almost every platform has the capacity to be beneficial in education, at least within informal education. The infographic slides of instagram, well-planned, nuanced and interactive twitter threads, or (my personal favourite) the 2 hour video essay on youtube. 

I have written a lot about youtube as an educational tool in previous education classes, but it remains one of my favourite ways to learn. I have been able to explore lectures in subjects that I don’t have the time to take here at UVIC with MIT’s OCW, deepened my understanding of topics that I already have covered in university with supplementary short lectures from independent creatures like 3blue1brown, and explored things like the intersection of pop culture, sociology and politics in maaaany video essays from creators such as Skip Intro, PhilosophyTube, and Michael Saba, to name a few of my recent favourites. The ability for anybody to create a polished video lecture/essay/work of any topic and upload it freely to youtube makes it an invaluable tool in my education, and I have learned an immense amount of mathematics, philosophy, political science, sociology, computer science, and more that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.

When working with the vulnerable sector, how does social media fit into professionalism and regulations?

Aside from the obvious (i.e. do not post pictures of or information regarding another person without their explicit consent, do not engage in any behaviour that leads to the harming of another person, i.e. harassment) there are additional factors to consider when working with the vulnerable sector. Seemingly innocuous photos may have the geolocation they were taken embedded within them, which could cause issues for the people within the vulnerable sector or the organization that an individual is working with, or a staff member’s unprofessional instagram posts may impact the organization’s reputation and ability to get funding, for example. When working within the vulnerable sector, it is important for people, educators and otherwise, to be very professional in their presentation and hypervigilant in their privacy and security in order to minimize potential harm.

My V and R map:

What digital platforms are students currently using to develop their professional network?

When looking at some of the VandR maps made by other students of the class, there certainly do seem to be a few repeated platforms, with Brightspace and Zoom as platforms that pop up the most to my eye. However, when we take into account the sampling bias of these maps, i.e. that they were all made by students that are electing to take a course about learning using social media platforms, I don’t think that we can be confident in applying any conclusions drawn from that dataset to the wider student body. Instead, I want to discuss this topic more generally. 

I think that the digital platforms students are currently using varies wildly between students, with some overlap/subcultures based on what kind of work that professional networking is going to be doing. As I have discussed previously, while Discord and Instagram are often not thought of as social media that can be used for professional networking, they are the go-to’s for people that I know that are involved in gaming content creation and fashion respectively. I have also heard from a friend of Discord as being prominent for people who are seeking employment in programming for indie games, as well as profiles on some coding practice/puzzle sites such as Leetcode or HackTheBox being used in employment for other coding jobs. I can only speak to what people I know are doing, and I may be missing very large parts of what is actually going on due to my own social circles’ political or cultural biases and blind spots. I have had others tell me that I need to get a robust Linkedin/Twitter/Facebook/whatever account to be employed, but when I asked the person who recommended Linkedin about Facebook they told me it really wasn’t that important in the end. Likewise to the person who recommended Facebook when I asked about Linkedin. From what I gather from these people I’ve spoken to and my understanding of the world, I would surmise that it would be best to maximize your odds by putting out as many different fleshed out profiles on as many different places for people to see as possible, since you never know for sure which one will be the one that may provide a meaningful opportunity.

So in essence, I think that I am not in the right position to answer truly and definitively as to what students use for their digital networking, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer turned out to be “Well, everything, really.”

What could the student consider in expanding their professional learning network?

The easy answer here is privacy, as there is a lot to be discussed in our society in the coming years about how we will reconcile privacy with our evermore interconnected, online, data-driven world, with a teeny tiny piece of that discussion to be happening below as I get to that question. However, I want to write about something different, since I think that many will be writing about privacy here and I will be writing on that topic as well later on in this post. 

As I have written above, students would probably be served well by the creation and maintenance of a litany of profiles on a wide variety of sites, but truth be told, that sounds completely exhausting, and frankly, alienating. Personally, I do not want to live my life for an audience. My life is meant to be lived for me, for my own personal enjoyment. Until it becomes a more pressing matter for me to begin to cultivate a professional online identity, I will be satisfied with the few small indicators that I exist that I have already created, plus or minus whatever I end up doing in the meantime for whatever work I pick up while I’m still in school. For me, a career is not and (hopefully) will not be something that I am, it is/will be something that I do. And when I am doing my career, I will not stop being me. Frankly, the purposeful cultivation of a professional identity, at least in the sense that I understand it as an unaccredited student who has had to make use of digital professional networking in a limited manner in order to find work over the summers, sounds painful. It reminds me of when I was younger and I had to work really hard to trim away all those parts of myself that didn’t fit the social expectations of someone of my demographic in order to fit in. I don’t want to cut away and hide parts of myself in order to present in the way that capitalism demands; as a perfect prim and proper worker, ready, if not eager, to become a cog in a machine and work myself to the bone to line someone else’s pockets with the value I and my coworkers create. Even when I am being employed, I want to be thought of and recognised as a fully human person, not as a machine to be used to raise productivity or increase a profit margin or to otherwise “bring value to the company.” Curating an identity that fundamentally isn’t the truth of who I am is something that I never want to have to do again. And so I won’t. And it’ll probably cost me some opportunities, maybe even a lot of opportunities, but I know I will be better off, happier, having done it my way. So overall, what could the student consider in expanding their professional learning network? I think that the best thing that I could say would be: “Be yourself, and have some fun with it.”

Thread Discussion: How do data privacy and security limit and promote a PLN? In your network, how can you create a digital identity/ reputation?

As I have discussed above, in what could be considered both a radical act of resistance or a naive act of self-sabotage, depending on who you ask, I have made the decision that I will not be working very hard to create a strictly professional digital identity; instead, I will have a digital identity that covers all the things I am and like and do, including my professional aspects of myself. In this sense, since I, as a person, do things online like play games with my friends, or interact with people on instagram or twitter, I create a digital identity and reputation by simply living my life. I post things that interest me; professionally, personally, or otherwise. In ways, this lack of purposeful privacy will impact my ability to promote my PLN, more below:

Here is what I wrote on the Mattermost discussion in direct reply to asiataryn:

“I think that this concept of privacy moderation that you discuss, (i. e opening up enough about yourself to make those connections, while not opening up so much as to be coming off too pushy or strong, and ending up putting people off), is something that is really interesting that not a lot of other people have touched on so far. I think that there is certainly something to this, about how too much privacy leads to connections not being made due to too much sheer social “distance”, while too little privacy can have a similar effect, with users breaking a kind of social taboo and putting other users off. Social media sites are often made to present a manicured version of ourselves, which as you note, people see as a reflection of the true self, but which simultaneously, as others have noted, is an act of role-playing; it’s performative. As such, people are expected to be performing a version of themselves that is supposed to be this version of themselves that is the best or most presentable, or perhaps more fundamentally, the version of themselves that they want to be perceived as by other users of that service. If user A sees user B doing things that don’t fit in with what user A expects others should be posting as part of performing their ideal professional self, then user A will reject user B’s performance. They see it as someone who isn’t able to act professionally, and thus isn’t able to bring anything of value to their PLN, or might even harm their PLN, since if a user C sees that user A has “followed” user B, and sees what user B does, then by following user B, user A has also demonstrated to user C that they are similarly failing to perform professionalism to user C’s standards, thus losing user A out on that connection even if user A hasn’t actually done anything wrong. In essence, a certain level of discretion and privacy are required to perform the professionalism that  PLN requires, but too much stifles the abilities to make connections since we never get to know anybody, since genuinely performing professionalism requires at least putting some of your true self into that performance.”

Consider in your blog submission how an employer would respond if you applied for a job with them and they assessed your social media presence via your digital identity.

I have already touched on this above, but as I said, for most employers, it would probably not be positive. A lot of anti-capitalist sentiment on there, as you could probably tell from my writing. That would definitely throw off a lot of potential employers, but hopefully there’ll still be a few that’ll look past it and realize that I am a good fit for whatever I am applying for, or perhaps some that might even see it as a benefit. 

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.