American Studies Blog: Digital Identities
Write a post illustrating
and analysing the various digital identities available to Americans today. What
can this tell us about the meaning of identity for American in the future?
According to Philip J.
Windley, a digital identity ‘is the data that uniquely describes a person or a
thing and contains information about the subject’s relationships’. This suggest
that in theory any action by individuals during their use of the internet
constitutes the creation in some part of their digital identity. In this
context, the latest Pew report's assertion that over 87% of Americans use the
internet suggests that exactly the same number of people also possess a digital
identity, regardless of whether they are aware of this or not. However, when
discussing digital identity there’s a need to recognize that it can broadly be
broken down into two types 1) Online Identity/Social Media that a person
consciously and deliberately construct, and which may be true or false; and 2)
An identity that is constructed by corporations based on information they track
about individuals. In addition, there is also a need to recognize that one's
online identity consists of the following features: 1) A Public Identity i.e.
the things about yourself you are happy to let everyone know and 2) A Private
identity - things about yourself you choose to share with few or any other
people.
Any discussion of digital
identities needs to try to answer several questions: to what extent are such
identities representative of one’s identity in real life?; how much of a
creation are they of the individual?; and finally, what of the problem of identity
theft and the development of fake digital identities online? It is obviously
possible that a person's digital identity can be manipulated by others in a
variety of ways, ranging from something as simple as a photograph being posted
online without the individual's knowledge, to hackers accessing someone's
information and spreading it online. In addition, it can be said that the
creation of a digital identity is influenced by the interface individuals have
with websites such as Facebook; this has been studied by academics such as
Joanne Garde-Hansen. In light of this, it seems absurd that an article in
Forbes Magazine commented on how prospective employers have started to examine
Facebook profiles as a means to establish who someone is as a person. Clearly, digital
identities are inherently unstable and easily manipulated, so it makes no sense
whatsoever for employers to judge people based on such information.
What we can learn about the
development of digital identities from the study of the rise of digital natives
and digital immigrants written by Marc Prensky is that the meaning of identity
in America is most likely going to change drastically, with the majority
American population possessing both an physical identity and digital identity,
and that people will have a real struggle trying to reconcile these two into a
single identity.
Sources
http://learn2.winchester.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=83208