Multiple Identities? A Reflection

Improvements

This week I put a lot of time into improving my blog by taking previous comments on board. I feel that the structure of my blog has improved and I used infographics to support my arguments. Overall, I learned a great deal from reading my peer’s blog posts. Many people took to this weeks topic from different angles and so the blogs largely varied.

Summarising Other Blogs

Below is an infographic which I created to summarise blogs in which I interacted with:

Figure 1 ‘Summarising blogs’ by Heighway, 2018

What Have I Learnt From My Peers?

From Stephanie’s post  I learnt that recruiters are less trusting of recruiting people from Facebook and prefer sites such as LinkedIn (TheFractons, 2017). Before this topic I only thought to create two separate Facebook accounts for professional and personal use. and so migrating to other platforms is not something I had considered. After reading Stephanie’s post I have realised it may be useful for me to create accounts on separate platforms to accommodate these different identities.

I also particularly enjoyed reading Tewsdae’s blog which focused on anonymous identity. which I did not include in my blog this week. After reading this blog and researching this concept further I have decided that I personally disagree with the ability to remain anonymous when posting online. This is mainly because I recollect a certain social media platform which was popular among my peers in secondary school. This site let users post on other users wall anonymously which subsequently led to bullying. I therefore think if you are happy to post something online you should be happy for your name to feature a long side it.

Below is a link which discusses anonymity online further:

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed expanding my knowledge of this topic. I have learned that although I created two separate Facebook pages to accommodate my professional and personal identities, this may not be enough when looking for a graduate job. I therefore plan to create a LinkedIn page this weekend!

My comments:

• Stephanie’s post
• Doug’s post

(321 Words)

References

The fractions. (2017). LinkedIn Vs. Facebook: Which is Better For Business Networking. [online] Available at:

http://www.thefractions.com/2017/04/linkedin-vs-facebook-better-business-networking/

Multiple Identities?

Figure 1: ‘Digital Identities’ by Heighway, 2018 created on Piktochart,

What is a digital identity?

The video I created below explains this:

According to van Dijck (2013), most professional persona and personal persona display distinct differences and so we should use more than one online identities to accommodate these.

Do we have multiple online identities?

Social media sites now allow users to create multiple pages for different uses. For example, I have created two Facebook pages which I use for personal use and professional use.

Below you can see that I can switch between these two accounts:

Figure 2: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chloeeve.heighway

Below are examples of the personal identity compared to my professional.

My personal Facebook page:

Figure 3: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chloe.heighway

My professional Facebook page:

Figure 4: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chloeeve.heighway

One main difference is that I limit the amount of information I share on the professional page, and connect with a lot fewer ‘friends’. I also share fewer photos. Reflecting on this, by sharing less information I feel as if I have less to be judged on.

Social media and employment 

Increasing numbers of employers, roughly 70%, check possible employees social media accounts before hiring them, therefore it is important that we are aware of this when job seeking (Salm, 2017).  Thus, it may be beneficial to create a professional profile like myself.

Here is a video explaining how to promote yourself online when seeking a job:

Single vs Multiple digital identities

However, as mentioned in the MOOC there are pros and cons of having single or multiple online identities. ‘Figure 5’ and ‘Figure 6’ explain these:

Figure 5: ‘Single Online Identities Pros and Cons’ by Heighway 2018, created on Piktochart

Figure 6: ‘Multiple Online Identities Pros and Cons’ by Heighway 2018, created on Piktochart

Maintaining our identities

Reflecting on ‘Figure 6’ it can be easy for internet users to forget about their different identities and so we must be careful to check we are writing on the correct account before posting. An example of the consequences of  confusing identities is  Sacco’s, senior director of IAC, mistake. Sacco began accidentally tweeting derogatory jokes on her professional account (Ronson, 2012) instead of her personal one. This shows how important it is to think before typing.

Conclusion

To conclude, although creating multiple online identities to accommodate our different personas can be beneficial, we must think about the cons of this, which are explained in figure 6, and we must ensure we post under the correct identity in order to avoid unfortunate consequences like Sacco!

(311 words)

References

Costa and Torres (2011), To be or not to be, the importance of Digital Identity in the networked society at:

http://eft.educom.pt/index.php/eft/article/view/216/126

Ronson (2015), How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life

Salm (2017), 70% of employers are snooping candidates’ social media profiles at:

https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/social-media-survey-2017

Van Djick (2013) ‘You have one identity’: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn at:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1025.9100&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Williams et al (2010) This Is Me – Digital Identity for careers. Lulu Marketplace.