Month: September 2022

1. What is a digital identity?

Digital identity is the identity tag that a person uses when surfing the Internet. Digital identity can be a trace of browsing the web, commenting, liking, or voting online, often these traces can be searched through search engines. 

If I want to get to know someone better, I can search through their digital identity, such as reading their comments on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, and follow the content to get a preliminary understanding of the person.

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

When people log into online media communities as digital identities, it’s easier to find their groups of interest, participate in online community activities, and learn more about specific events. In reality, people sometimes divide groups by region and culture, and the communication within these groups can move from offline to online, and the communication within groups can be closer and more timely than offline. The participation of different groups on the Internet has become an important part of social media, and even social media itself will become a group to communicate with other types of social media group.

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

Digital identities can be integrated into online groups, and online publics arise from the communication between online groups. Interestingly, when these groups interact with each other, they “label” themselves and each other as belonging to their own group. Region and culture are not the only criteria that divide groups in online media. There are various criteria to divide groups, including occupation, interest, political orientation, gender, family identity and so on. Generally speaking, the number of people in a group is not fixed but fluid, and can be fluid between groups. Close communication within and between groups online creates a lot of cultural identity and mutual respect, which is good. However, it is undeniable that the gathering and communication of extremist groups has become more frequent, and this kind of close communication will also intensify the offline gathering activities of extremist groups, which is not conducive to peaceful communication.

1.  What does it mean to network using social media?

Social media is a channel for people in modern society to communicate and share information. It is characterized by information interaction across different time and space through the network, which promotes the formation of information explosion. The multicultural exchanges and integration have enabled more people to understand and set up mutual tolerance, eliminating discrimination and isolation.

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

Lowering the price of electronic devices and building more network base stations could make social media accessible to more people. Social volunteers could go to nursing homes to help seniors who have trouble using social media and teach them to join network community. Schools could carry out courses about social media to educate more students who are interested in it.  Students can conduct social media themed activities at school to engage students who are not familiar with social media. In addition, multiple channels can be used for large-scale publicity. It is a very good way to let more people know about social media through the original mainstream media channels, such as newspapers and radio.

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

There are many benefits to public communication, and it is obvious that useful information can be extracted easily and efficiently.

However, not all information is trustworthy. There are a lot of false information on online social media, and there are a lot of information from unknown sources. In this case, you can watch some information provided by mainstream media platforms certified by professional organizations. This can significantly reduce the risk of obtaining false information.