Blog post 2

We’ve all heard the word identity, or the term “secret identity”, often used to refer to the person behind a super hero’s persona. We can take Superman and Clark Kent as an example of this. Clark Kent is Superman, and Superman is Clark Kent, but these characters seem to be separate people to the general public.

We can see digital identity in a similar light. Our digital identity is how we represent ourselves online, which can be very different from how we act offline. Jawed, Mahboob, and Yasmeen’s article (2019) defines digital professional identity as a “professional identity which develops through internet-based social interactions by utilizing online platforms and communication tools”. 

Now much like the fictional characters we all have heard of, we too can create our own secret identities or personas to cover up our real identities. One advantage of interacting on social media platforms is that we can be as anonymous as we choose to be. Our actions on social media build up personas for each separate account.

I have a lot of experience with this sort of situation as I do livestreams online and I have a rather large following that doesn’t even know what I look like. Additionally I don’t go by my first name on my public account. On the other side of things, my personal account mentions nothing about me having this public persona. I share things on one account that I would never share on the other. 

That being said, people have to be careful what they post and where they post it. As mentioned in the Mahboob et al., (2019) article, not having a face to match to your online presence means some people may feel more inclined to bully others, as the target likely doesn’t know who is behind the account.  The way you behave on the internet can be kept secret to an extent, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be careful what they do on the internet. Even the most personal and supposedly most protected information can be revealed. If your real identity is revealed to be linked to accounts that behave maliciously, this could affect your employment status or likelihood of being employed in the future. 

Additionally, the way you behave online also affects what is shown to you. As mentioned in my previous blog post, algorithms can essentially figure you out and advertise different things based on what you say and what you interact with online, which can limit what you’re able to access in networked publics.

With all this in mind, we are able to create new identities online that can greatly differ from one another. However, we should always be careful online, as there is the risk of anonymous accounts no longer being anonymous, and our different personas all being linked to one another. Basically if all these identities are discovered to be linked to one person, that means if we behave poorly in real life or on any of these accounts, the person behind these accounts could receive great backlash both online and in real life. To put it simply, even if we create different personas, no matter how anonymous they are, we should be careful about what we say.

References

Mahboob, U., Jawed, S., & Yasmeen, R. (2019). Digital professional identity: Dear Internet! Who am I? Education for Health, 32(1), 33. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=39e42f65-1a93-4d35-9450-0dfa15be47a8%40sdc-v-sessmgr02

Not mentioned in this blog post

Spracklen, K. (2015). Identity-Making and Social Media. Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture, 94-112. Retrieved from https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/book/10.1057%2F9781137405876

Stoller, E. (2016). What is Digital Identity? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0RryRbJza0&feature=youtu.be

World Economic Forum. (2019). The Value of Digital Identity for the Global Economy and Society [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-V7lyxrOmw