Week’s 4 activity consisted on creating a graph based on the marketing definition of an identity graph. The rules: without a self-referential node, from your own point of view, and it could be partial.
To create my graph, I first thought about how I would describe my online identity, and contrasted that with my online footprint. To start with, I choose three of my main groups of reference: family, friends and colleagues, and in the three countries where I have lived. From there on, I began to choose the different aspects I wanted to include, always considering my online footprint. I listed some of the activities I do or I have done that I consider are related to my online identity. I tried to think of each item in a neutral way. Why did I do this? I realised sometimes one aspect could be explained in more than one way, depending on the narrative I created. It also made me think about how others see me, how I could be seen as»content», and how my view and theirs may not fit. One of the last things I did was to add some of the sites that I use where there is a community (whether I am an active participant or not), and link them to as many items as they were relevant.
Another reason why I use neutral terms is that I wanted the resulting graph (although partial and general) to be a direct representation of myself, but at the same time, I wanted that it missed the only thread that would give it truthful meaning, that is me.
You realize quickly how complicated such maps become …
Kevin
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Thanks for your comment Kevin. Yes, mapping our online identities is complex, as it is mapping our «off-line» identities (“off-line” just to differentiate them). I guess this is what is constant, we as individuals are complex, and we project that complexity online. The next step is that thanks to, and because of, our constant online interactions, our online identities become even more complex, constantly changing with our connections, and that redefines our identity (“off-line”).
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I think I took a similar approach to you, in that I asked myself, ‘if you know this about me (e..g. I have a Flickr account) what else can you find out about me? But you have taken your graph a lot further than I did. It has been interesting to see the different ways in which participants in this course approached this task. Thanks for sharing. Jenny
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Thanks for your comment Jenny. I guess I was not really thinking about what an external viewer could know about me, but what that external viewer “thought” he/she knew about me by looking at my graph. And with that “idea” of me, how that viewer would interpret my different connections and complexities. That external idea of me could create a narrow perspective of my online identity, and only a partial snapshot of me (to use the word of Stephen Downes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjhObFQIWL0&feature=youtu.be, minute 26).
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