EDCI338

Wanqin's Academic Site for Social Media & Personalized Learning

Month: January 2023

Digital Identity

25 January 2023 / / 2 Comments

– What is a digital identity?

Digital identity is people’s presence online, consisting of what people post and share, and how they engaged and treat other people using digital tools. Blogs, Twitter, and portfolios are forms of digital identity. People show who they are, how they behave and what they want to express in these posts for their own benefit. For example, Digital identity could attract potential employers and create career paths. From their targets, their lifestyles and their way to design and create the posts, employers could figure out whether they fit the company’s culture and value. Certainly, digital identity might also be detrimental since it may cause privacy concern such as leaking personal information to strangers. In conclusion, digital identity is a double-sided sword that could showcase people for their own benefits, but is also possible to bring harm (Stoller, 2016).

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

The personal approach to digital identity mainly focuses on self-presentation online. People always use digital platforms such as social media as their digital leisure space, which allows them to express themselves, share their lifestyles and personal obsessions, and form communicative interactions with others. In this case, social media becomes a platform for people to perform ‘role-play’ and ‘identity-making’, for example, showcase who they are, what they like and what are their perspectives and thoughts to others, for the purpose of obtaining self-leisure, community belongings and networking, and expressing freely (Spracklen, 2015). Take me as an example, I always post joyful moments of my life on Instagram, including life photos, random thoughts to a book or a movie, hobbies, etc. Since Instagram allows others to like and comment my post, I gained plenty of followers who share the same hobbies or life attitudes as me and initiated great and pleasant community networks together.

The professional approach to digital identity via social media is slightly different. Although it is also about ‘role-play’ and ‘identity-making’, its purpose is not only to gain personal digital leisure or showcase people themselves, but to interpret their professional values, competencies and experience, aiming to achieve inter-professional communication and explore career paths (Mahboob et al., 2019). Linkedin is a great example that people build up their professional profile by listing their education and work experience, key competencies and professional achievement. This professional identity may attract potential employers to get in touch based on some values and competencies they appreciate, and also multi-disciplinary professionals who wants to develop networking and communication to achieve individual professional growth.

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

Digital identity becomes more and more important in public networks that it brings security and convenience for people’s daily technology-based networking. For instance, the simple digital identity people use every day is the username and password for their accounts. Username and password conduct identification and authentication to ensure it is the right person to log in the account, to prevent account theft and private information leak. Thus, people are able to conveniently and safely perform transactions via e-banking, visa or work permit applications and other daily activities fully online instead of travelling in person (Horton, 2022).

However, digital identities also bring negative impacts. The priority concern is definitely the erosion of privacy. People might feel uncomfortable when their online activities are monitored by the system, although it is for security purposes. Also, the personal information typed in is also owned by the system, for instance, the credit card company, which cause potential information security concern because people cannot ensure their information not to leak (Horton, 2022).

– Can a digital wallet provide trust in networked publics?

Digital wallet is widely used by the public today and it is convenient for daily payment that by adding the credit or debit card information to the app, people can directly pay by the digital card stored in the phone instead of bringing the physical card. It is considered safe and trustworthy by many people since it has multiple security layers. The digital wallet transactions are protected by the wallet app itself, the credit card company and the credit or debit union that issued the card, to prevent the money to be unreasonably held by retailers and the information to be revealed to retailers. However, privacy concern still exists for digital wallet. Although the security layers ensure the transaction security and information privacy to retailers, the card information is owned by the app, card companies and card unions. Whether they will not leak the information cannot be ensured. Besides, if someone loses his or her phone and the phone is without passwords, anybody else can use the digital wallet to pay, causing information leak and huge financial loss (Citizens Bank, n.d).

Comment:

Blog Post #2 – What Does My Digital Identity Look Like?

Reference:

Horton, C. (2022, April 26). Digital Identity – challenges and threats. Digital Identity – challenges and threats | THINK Digital Partners : THINK Digital Partners. Retrieved January 27, 2023, from https://www.thinkdigitalpartners.com/news/2022/04/26/digital-identity-challenges-and-threats/

Mahboob, U., Jawed, S., & Yasmeen, R. (2019). Digital Professional Identity: Dear Internet! who am I? Education for Health, 32(1), 33. https://doi.org/10.4103/efh.efh_232_17

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

Stoller. Eric. “What is Digital Identity?” Youtube, uploaded by University of Derby, 25th November 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0RryRbJza0

What are Digital Wallets and are they safe? | citizens bank. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2023, from https://www.citizensbank.com/learning/is-digital-wallet-safe.aspx

PLN & Public Communications

18 January 2023 / / 0 Comments
  1. What does it mean to network using social media?

Networking is a professional skill that builds, maintains and activates a connection with preferred groups of people for the purpose of sharing knowledge and improving learning (What is a personal learning network (PLN)?, n.d.). Small study group in class is a form of network, however, climate changes such as COVID-19 dramatically reduce the opportunities for in-person networks, especially for students living in distanced areas. Thus, emerging technologies, for example, social medias become the bridge for communications among students, even across far distances. Network using social media is a innovative way for students to conduct asychronous communication and learning with others via text messages, comments, and videos.

EDCI 338 is a great example of networking using social media. Students use Mattermost, a social media platform to network and communicate in preferred groups by building separate channels and sharing resources in the group chat. Although students may be located in different cities, provinces or even countries, Mattermost still allows them to and seamlessly connect with preferred people, and improve learning together.

Mattermost networking

2. How are we motivated to participate in networked publics?

Take me as an example, my motivation to participate in networked public is my orientation for knowledge and learning outcomes improvement. When I write an essay alone, I used to always stuck during the process due to limited topics that I could think of, limited details to develop the thesis, and also difficulties to find resources for references. As long as I was stucked, I started to struggle with the essay and felt anxious. The motivation raised since I realized that reaching out to my classmates might provide different perspectives and more insights. Thus, I connected with a few of classmates , added them all into a group chat, and asked them for their suggestions. Immediately, they provided diverse perspectives of thoughts based on their own experience, which opened and wided my eyesight, and made the selection of topics and the detail content much easier. I realized communicating with a group of people sharing similar values and backgrounds effectively resolved the self-learning-caused mind limitations and improved the learning outcome. Since then, a networked learning became my routine learning improvement method. I also paid attention to always maintain the network I built, and activated the connections when needed.

3. What are the risks & rewards of public communications?

The major risk for public communication is the concern of privacy and information security. With the increased use of technologies and social media as public communication tools, leak of private information is highly possible to occur. From the texts, pictures and videos people posted on social media, others are able to grasp and learn about individual’s information even when people are unaware. ‘Privacy is networked’. What people post on social media may also leak others’ information (Boyd, 2012). For example, if I post a picture of me standing in front of Effiel Tower, a number of strangers may be captured by the photo and are unawarely posted by me to my networks on social media, which is a privacy issue since not everyone wants to expose themselves to strangers.

But rewards also exist for public communication. Apart from improving learning, networking and communicating with others could improve expression skills, and develop leadership and inter-person coordination skills. As long as I started to maintain and activate my learning network group, I saw my progress in organizing my speaking and cultivating collaborative leadership through expressing thoughts with the group, and organizing group learning activities.

Comment:

Blog Post #1 – PLN & Public Communications

Reference:

Boyd, D. (2012). Networked privacy. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 348–350. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v10i3/4.4529

What is a personal learning network (PLN)? FutureLearn. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/learning-network-age/0/steps/24644

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  1. Hey Wanqi, First of all, I loved reading your blog. It clearly states everything that was asked in simple and…

  2. Hi Wanqi, Your paragraph provides a good example of how an effective PLN can help with both in-course and post-course…

  4. Hi Qinjiang, First of all after reading your thoughts, I agree with you about digital identity not only to get…

  5. Hello Wanqin, I really enjoyed reading your blog post, it was very insightful! I really liked how you mentioned that…

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