Online Personas

Who are you online? And who would you like to be?

In a 2009 interview Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, addressing his stance on Facebook privacy policies, made the following statement:

“You have one identity…The days of you having a different image for your work friends and your co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly…Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

When he was first developing Facebook, Zuckerberg made a conscious decision not to offer separate personal and work-oriented profiles, explaining that he believed in openness and transparency. Consider your own stance on this topic. Do you have multiple online identities for different purposes? Is it possible to create an authentic digital representation of yourself? And should you be completely transparent online?

You might also apply these questions to in-person contexts. Are you the same person with your friends that you are at work or at school? Or do you project different identities depending on the social situation?

Furthermore, are you the same person online that you are in face-to-face situations? Or do you behave differently in these contexts?

You will have the opportunity to think through these questions in the following quests as you explore your online identity (or identities) in personal and professional environments. In Digital Footprint you will examine your online presence, and consider how you represent yourself and how you are perceived. In Personal Brand you will learn how to leverage the online environment to curate your achievements, and create a profile that highlights your unique strengths.

REFERENCE:

Kirkpatrick, D. (2011). The Facebook Effect: The inside story of the company that is connecting the world. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 199-200.

For this challenge you have explored who you are online, who you are perceived to be, and the extent to which you can manage this impression of your online identity.

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Alone Together, asserts that in terms of social identity we now have a sense of “multiple” selves. Watch Turkle’s TED Talk, and then complete the following capstone activity.

• 1. Look at the multiple selves you have created on social media or create a social location map of your digital identities after reading the following article: Express Yourself: Crafting Social Location Maps and Identity Monologues. You may want to use a concept mapping tool like Popplet, or you can sketch out a map by hand.

  2. Reflect on how your social media presence impacts your online persona. Are you comfortable with the image you project?

  3. List three steps you might take (or that you have already taken) to improve your personal brand.