Developing my Digital Identity

This week there has been a lot of reflection upon what I want my digital identity to look like. When learning about the visitor and resident typology (White and Cronu, 2011), I found myself thinking about where I landed within digital networks, and it happened to lean towards the visitor end. I am someone who likes to use networks with a task in mind and do not comment or engage with others online when it comes to my personal networks. This brings to me to one of my goals, which is to become more of a resident within my frequented networks. More specifically, I would like to be more engaged in Facebook, Twitter, Etsy. On the other hand, I find myself a resident in my institutional networks as these are areas that engagement is needed in order to work with my fellow cohort and other course related acquaintances.

When reading the post "Who are you? Considering Issues of Web Identity" by Kelly Schryver (2013). Something that resonated with me was how Schryver (2013) discussed how we as a society must reflect on if what we show of ourselves online would match the person we are in real life. This is something I strive for, I do not like to edit myself and be someone different online compared to when I am face to face with someone, I feel like I am authentically myself. As Schryver (2013) mentioned, how there could be conversations or posts that you thought were private but were then found by other people. It is for this reason that while I am authentic online, I am also quite private and therefore do not post a lot and keep most of my personal pages set on private so only a select group of people can see my profiles and posts. Even then, I post once every few months or just send direct messages to my friends. This brings me to my second goal, I would like to post more on my pages, whether it be for school, a status to talk about a show or article I enjoyed, etc. This second goal is also one way I will try to be more engaged in my social networks, and allow myself to go from visitor to resident.

For Facebook, I plan on posting updates every few weeks instead of months. I want to show people more about my school and share my blog posts with them. So when I post a new blog, my idea is to share a link and discuss it on my feed as well. Furthermore, I am part of many different groups on Facebook, for my hobbies such as crochet and baking. I love to see other people's pictures and give a reaction, I now will also try to comment on them with word of encouragement and even post some of my own creations.

In terms of Twitter, I have not used it a lot in terms of tweeting, but I often go to see what other people have posted. This is especially true when I look up hashtags of shows I am watching or see what my friends are saying there. How I will become a resident on Twitter is to interact with those hashtags by tweeting with the tag myself and perhaps commenting on those who I found interesting as well.

Finally for Etsy, I used to be quite the resident as I use this platform to sell some items I create from my 3D printer. I have recently stopped due to school and other priorities. My plan is to use my agenda to schedule a time within the week or month where I can become active there and start posting new products and creations and promote it using Facebook , Twitter or Instagram.

In the end, this week has allow me to sit back and reflect on my digital identity in a way I never really thought of before. These are my goals for now, but I think as this course continues, my thoughts and plans may change slightly over time. I am looking forward to continuing to develop my digital identity throughout this course and the rest of my time as a MALAT student.

References

Schryver, K. (2013, February 5). Who are you online? Considering issues of web identity. The New York Timesblogs. Alternate link to the The NYT blogs site.

White, D. S., & LeCornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).