Visually Mapping my Networks

My networks mapped out

When making this visual version of my networks, it allowed me to reflect further on how these are interconnected with varying parts of my life. Using Kumu, I situated myself in the middle of the map, I decided to keep it to four categories that fanned out from the centre: family, friends, online groups, professional networks.

For the category of family, that is pretty self-explanatory, it revolves around parents, cousins, aunts, etc. This is where I use the most personal types of networks that involved instant messaging through Facebook or WhatsApp in order to stay in contact with them.For me, the circle visualizes my inner circle so to speak, that they are one of my more important networks and therefore should be seen as such with a larger circle and close to myself in the centre of the map.

Next would be the category of friends, here they are still in the shape of a circle because they are part of my day to day life. Here is where I started to see a bit of a shift of the networks on the map as we use quite a few different ones to communicate depending on the need of our conversations. We tend to use more types of social media than anything in order to get in touch with each other. I think that the reason is because we grew up with all of these different types of networks when they first started out, and we liked to experiment a bit with all of them. While I use some less than others now, it still stays the same that we do not really use phones or other forms of communication in order to connect with one another.

As we continue to go around the map, the next group is online groups. These are the people I have met through forums on discord or by joining groups in other social media websites. I felt the need to change the shape of the connection as while I have things in common with them, they are people who I have not yet to meet in person. Interestingly enough, there are still some networks that interconnected from this category into my inner circles. For example, when COVID hit my friends and I tended to use Discord in order to play games or connect online sometimes.

My final category on my map would be professional networks. This area is where I combined both my coworkers and current cohort at RRU. These are two areas that are part of my professional world and where I use various different networks in order to connect with them. Since where I work is quite small in comparison to some, it was quite easy to either communicate in person or through WhatsApp. On the other hand, being part of RRU has allowed me to expand on my use of networks to include, Slack, Moodle and more.

Once I finished my map, I took the time to look at the connections and loops made there were some connections that did not surprise me, and some that did. That is to say, there were some connections that were more interconnected into my networks than I thought they would. I am sure as this program continues this map will contain even more connections and new networks, and am looking forward to seeing it expand and grow.

Since I had some surprises, I am curious if anyone else did too? Did you have things more interconnected than you thought?