Blog Post #2 Digital Identity

What Is A Digital Identity?

Digital identity can be defined as the online version of yourself and all your information and data specifically about you. Every interaction from what you’ve said, what others have said about you, where you’ve been, images you’re tagged in, personal information, social media profiles, and much more can be referred to as our digital footprint(Jawed, et al, 2019). Having said this, your digital identity can be personal or professional and both can differ from your real life identity. Social media allows people to post things so they can be seen how they want to be seen. For example, I have friends that are always posting their workouts on social media. For some, they are trying to portray someone who is active and physically fit when in truth, the workout lasted only 5 min.

 How Do Personal Versus Professional Approaches To Digital Identity Affect Social Media Use?

Your digital identity, personal or professional is complex and will affect how you use social media. Your personal digital identity affects your use of social media by focusing on your personal life and how you see yourself in society and how this was developed through social interaction. Your social media use will most likely be more for pleasure and you may be inclined to post pictures of what you do in your leisure time. You may feel more comfortable reaching out to people and connecting on a personal basis and sharing information more freely. This differs from your professional identity because your professional identity refers to who you are in your professional career. Your approach to social media use may be more serious and you may spend more time deciding what is appropriate to post. You may look at a picture and think about how other people may perceive you as a person before you post it. Another example of how your professional digital identity may affect your social media use is that you may only post things that are applicable to your profession. If you were a teacher, your professional identity may only be based on educational content and the things you post will most likely interest others with the same interests.

How Do Digital Identities Converge In Networked Publics – What Are The Impacts and/or Benefits?

Networked publics allow people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family(Boyd, 2010). On these networked publics, our personal and professional digital identities can sometimes converge. It used to be much easier to keep our professional and personal digital identities separate, but this is becoming harder and harder to do. For example, an individual may use their same Facebook account to talk to family and friends about personal matters as they do to connect with colleagues about their work. It is entirely possible in this situation that the person’s family members or friends might view work conversations and vice versa. Thus the boundaries between the work and the home converge.  Another example of identities converging is when a company uses social media to find out interesting things about their employees’ personal lives so they can decide to hire them to work for their company. If an employer is able to gain a glimpse into who they are, then they would have a better idea if they fit into the company’s culture. This could be beneficial to a potential employee if they do not post inappropriate content on their social media accounts but it could also cost them the job!

The negative impact of our identities converging on networked publics can force people to create identities that aren’t authentic. We may post things based on who our audience may be or who we want it to be.  In Karl Spracklen’s book, “Identity making and Social Media”,  he describes how we interact online and how we may not be who we really portray who we are, “everybody in a given social network will be performing the role they think gives them the correct social identity in the right form of belonging”(Spracklen, 2015). This deception can also  play a part in your professional identity as making a good impression on your boss or your coworkers can be a focus for some. 

Can A Digital Wallet Provide Trust In Networked Publics?

Just how safe are digital wallets? For most consumers the ability to pay by mobile offers greater convenience than carrying a traditional wallet with multiple credit and debit cards. If you lose your wallet, any cash you had is gone and then you have to cancel all the cards you carry and get new ones.  It’s a different story if you have your information stored in a digital wallet app on your smartphone. Even if your phone is stolen or lost, it’s far more difficult to access your information. This is because phones give the owner the option to require a thumbprint or a facial scan to unlock their device. While it may be a pain to enter a code or scan your face every time you open your phone, a little prevention will go a long way.  Using a digital wallet is not without risks. To increase trust in your digital wallet, it is best to use apps like PayPal and Apple Pay where all your financial activity is encrypted. I use PayPal to pay for things online because I know that all my data is stored on a firewall-secured server that doesn’t have a direct connection to the internet. This is better than giving my credit card information to online websites. When I pay for something with Apple Pay, my credit card info is hidden in a randomly generated code. This means my credit card never appears on the merchant’s database for hackers to get a hold of.  I would be lying if I said I trust my digital wallet 100%. All I can do is take every step possible to prevent my information from being stolen. One last thing, never do financially sensitive or personal business on public wifi.  Public wifi is always vulnerable to hackers!  

References:

boyd,danah. (2010).  “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. pp. 39-58.

Jawed, Saira, et al. “Digital Professional Identity: Dear Internet! Who Am I?” Education for Health (Abingdon, England), vol. 32, no. 1, 2019, pp. 33–35., doi:10.4103/efh.EfH_232_17. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021. 

Spracklen K. (2015) Identity-Making and Social Media. In: Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137405876_6