What is a digital identity?

A digital identity is your presence online. Where and who you interact with is a part of your identity online. What you post, comment, and share, can generally always be tracked back to you, even in the case of private accounts. Things like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts are platforms where you can post pictures and comments and if your name is associated with the account, it is pretty easy to track it back to the owner of the posts. This creates a sort of “identity” that follows you online and throughout life.

How do personal versus professional approaches to digital identity affect social media use?

Posting personally can effect your professional career as you carry a digital footprint with you through life if you choose to have an online presence. Sometimes inappropriate content or words are shared online and they can directly affect your career as they could go against company beliefs or guidelines. Many employers do background checks which include looking through social platforms before hiring employees. This would affect your social media use because perhaps someone would chose to post appropriate content only and maybe use private accounts if they are aware of how it could affect their career.

How do digital identities converge in networked publics – what are the impacts and/or benefits?

Since there are so many different types of online platforms, digital identities converge in networked publics by developing different personas across different platforms. For example, I use my facebook to connect with people in various clubs I have been in throughout the years, therefore my facebook has very little personal information or images of me as it is simply being used as a means of communication. I use Instagram as a space to post more personal photos throughout life, therefore more of an identity can be created on this platform. Additionally, I use Youtube with the sole purpose of posting content for school which is also a private account. However, once someone starts following and interacting with multiple platforms of mine (especially since a lot of them are connected in multiple ways), my personal identity quickly moves throughout my networked publics.

Group reflection on digital identity:

Many people in my group added that they did not find much when searching their names on the web. One of my group members mentioned that their LinkedIn popped up, and I noticed that my facebook account popped up. Also some of my old race times for track and field popped up, but other than that my social media use is relatively private and controlled. It is, however, interesting how easy it is to be able to find anyone of various platforms as the majority of people are on some form of social media. Even though privacy is relatively easy to accomplish by being able to monitor who can follow you, it is still very easy to learn quite a bit of information about where people live and their full names as well as what school they go to simply by seeing their profile online.