Online Relationships and Identity

There are a few different courses at UNSW which are currently exploring the notions of network literacy and online interaction, and I’ve been following them with tremendous interest. Not the least of which relating to the use of student blogs, Twitter, and I would imagine eventually other new media tools as well. As a researcher I unfortunately don’t have many opportunities in practice to test my theories on new media as a facilitator of learner empowerment. So the activity that’s starting to swell across Twitter and the student is fantastic to witness.

One post in particular I ran across this morning, by Andrea Ward, covers the notion of digital identity, relationships, self-censorship, and several other pretty heavy topics – all of which inspire reflection and contemplation on our place and behaviour online.

Andrea writes:

“Is there an intuitive social network etiquette I have yet to come to grips with? If my social and professional networks are unavoidably linked, how do we separate the social and professional identities online? Do we need to?”

In response to this I left the following contribution:

Hi Andrea,

I see this train of thought coming up again and again across the web, and I think it’s a really important one for us as individuals to grapple with – because it helps us each decide how we will approach online interaction.  The social-professional boundaries that exist offline are much more blurred and flexible online.

So you end up seeing spheres of activity that are largely independent of one another offline run together.  My Dad for example recently added me as a friend on Facebook, then my aunt, then my other aunt, and a slew of cousins.  So I’ve now got a motley collection of work colleagues, relatives, uni friends, high school friends, and people I only know from the web all intermixed with one another.

It was a really odd feeling at first – and somewhat uncomfortable.  I think this is largely due to the fact we have different sorts of relationships (professional, social, emotional etc) with different people, and with that there are expectations and assumptions on role (realised or habitual), accepted/normal behaviour, or shared experiences that have emerged over time.

I’ve found that mixing company left me feeling a bit exposed at first.  For example I have another blog where I used to talk about fairly progressive (bordering on radical) politics.  Then my mother-in-law discovered it and I had an immediate crisis because there was a conflict in which role I felt compelled to adopt – one where I expressed my personal views from a fairly anonymous soapbox, or another one that was used to interacting with grandmother of my kids on weekends.

As far as self-censorship goes ultimately I realised that my online habits had well and truly run together, and there was really no hope of maintaining separate identities – one professional, one personal.  So I’m less concerned about it now.  But I do operate with a bit of a benchmark of “What if my wife’s mum discovered this?”

I do know people that have a few (or even many) different identities online to try and keep their lives and activities relatively separate, so it is possible.  Then again with search engines like Google around, people can quite easily discover your hidden YouTube account despite your best efforts.

My work colleagues did and now my guitar clips have been played during the staff meeting – to my sheer and utter embarassment.  At the end of the day it goes with the territory I guess.  If we put stuff online I think we need to be prepared for unexpected people to find it!

Great post – thanks for the that!

Cheers,

Mike

Just a final note, if you’d like to comment on this thread I’d encourage you to do it on Andrea’s post – since that’s where it began.  I’ve posted my thoughts here mainly to track them for my own benefit.  I also think it’s important for new users of new media to gain as holistic an appreciation for the networked, communicative or discursive characteristics as possible, and receiving comments to their work is a key way of reinforcing this.