Who and how am I online?

Personal identity management for professional development

19 May2011

Who and how am I online?

From here to Facebook19 May2011

Who and how am I online?

From Facebook to Eternity19 May2011

Who and how am I online?

You are what you like19 May2011

Aim

• Identify tools (mediational means) developed by the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme that have the capacity to be deployed in personal identity projects.

Objectives

• Articulate y/our own understanding of the nature of human identity and how this is worked out in online/digital environments

• Explain y/our own online professional development practices in terms of identity projects

• Explain steps that might be taken to better manage our online identity practice

• Build on the concept of multiple hybrid identities in order to more effectively represent our self to different audiences in different spheres

Why? Symptomatic momentsImpacting on identity:• Digital Rights Management: Ian Kearns (2002), Code Red:

iTunes, Spotify• Software sorting: society (Graham 2005)• Algorithms: People like you…: Amazon market information• Neuromarketing: EmSense, the leader in quantitative

neurometrics, … have made direct brain activity measurement easier and scalable

• Associative, personalised links, …, are largely missing from both the theory and the practice of [the] Web Wendy Hall, Alt-C (2002)

DRM Code Red• Technology to manage rights precedes the social, legislative

or philosophical establishment and/or protection of those rights.

• Asserted rights (privilege) are given shape in DRM technologies in advance of legislation and then either quietly grandfathered in or subsequently enacted.

• In the case of DRM these rights are in respect to copyright material.

• Embraces everything from Pirate Bay through Pirates of the Caribbean to academic publishing.

(Kearns 2002)

Software sorting• … central role of computerized code in shaping the social and

geographical politics of inequality in advanced societies. (Graham 2005)

In respect to market participation, the invisible hand gets a little help

• [W]hen you interact with a service online or by phone there may be software in action that mediates how you experience the service: by sorting you. Live in a high income postcode? Get routed to a sales person more quickly than if your IP address makes you look as if you come from a less promising area. On record as an awkward customer or "time-waster"? Then wait in the queue.

(Schmoller 2007)

Amazon algorithms• People like you

• "Algorithms are what make our site run, (and) such a unique place to shop. It's through algorithms that we're able to do things like make recommendations and tell you what customers who bought this item also bought," said Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith.Read more: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-965068.html#ixzz1MlptErEd

Neuromarketing• The EmSense neuromarketing database, now the world’s

largest, recently exceeded the 50,000 respondent milestone. These respondents draw from over 10 countries, including India and China. EmSense also collected eye-tracking data from 12,000 respondents, while 3,000 more were studied in actual retail environments as they completed typical shopping journeys.

• “The key advantage of a large database is that it provides rich norms, the element market researchers most desire. [my emphasis] [link]

Facebook? Google?

• … don’t even go there

Wendy Hall warns…

• Corporations, through loyalty cards and other sources of information already hold your portfolio.

• Suggests that new web technologies can help us individuals to manage our digital identity.

But, can they?

Applications in

• Immigration and nationality• Education• Employment• Social order and control• Resilience• Health• Defence, war and security

Via Helen Keegan

Identity as a topic

• Social psychological

– “Weak”– “Strong”– Economic actor– Habitus

Weak identity constructs

• Authentication, access, permissions

– Permissions tied to a token• Log-in, access to computer systems, credit cards

– Permissions tied to a (token tied to a) body• Passport, Drivers Licence

– To what extent is the token “tied” to the body?

Strong identity constructs

• Gender, age, nationality, social class, embodiment, sexuality, trade, profession, taste, domestic circumstances, parentage, offspring

• To what extent are these individual “essentials” and to what extent are these social “ideals”

Economic actor• The problem of “identity theft”– Or misassignment

• Can this apply to other agencies?– Political actors? (Cyber war)– Domestic actors? (Cyber crimes and misdemeanours)

• What it it about “us” that might be compromised?

Habitus

• Concept associated with and developed by Bourdieu– Also largely responsible for social capital theory

• The human phenotype expressing genetic and cultural inheritance in social context(s)

• Digital habitus

Identity Projects• Identity projects are social and contextual: there is a formal

relationship between identity and unity.• Identity projects do not just take place in the individual.

National identity projects are entered into regularly in response to immigration, social order and other cultural entitlements.

• Identity projects may “... involve efforts to acquire the attributes of an existing social identity...” Such an identity may be “real or mythical”. Or, conversely “There might very well be cases where an individual’s problem is to retain a given social identity against various destructive influences.” (Harre 1983)

• Digital Identity Projects

Via Helen Keegan

Hybridity• Identity components• Reconfigurable• Multiple identities– MPD?

• Examples– Anglo-Welsh, and any other hyphenated descriptor– Learner-Teacher– Benevolent-Oppressor (colonial/parental)

• Identity politics

It is not just about logging in

• I am a person with an institutional identity• I have an ATHENS/Shibboleth identity• I have access to propositional knowledge• I can grant/subvert access controls• I belong!• I can have this “belonging” taken away

Conflated meanings at the institutional (and demonic) level

• Weak and strong identity clash in institutions and policy

• Public discourses on:– National identity– Immigration– Participation and progression– Plagiarism

Via Patsy Clarke

Social/particpatory media

• User-generated content

• Profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile (danah boyd)

• “… a literacy of participation” (Mike Wesch)

Discussion

• What do you do online? – work, learn, shop, civic engagement, play, etc

• What applications and/or websites do you use– Do you use multiple sites for any category of activity?

• What of your online activity can be said to have an overt element of identity projection

• Of those sites you use that do NOT have an overt element of identity projection, nevertheless, what might they “say about you”?

Discussion

• What on-line tools (mediational means) do you use in your personal professional development practice?– Why these?

• What on-line tools (mediational means) do you use in the personal professional development practice, which you develop with others?– What are the barriers to adoption?

Discussion

• What tools (mediational means) developed by the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme have the capacity to be deployed in personal identity projects?– Why these?

• Domains– Learning design– Mentoring– Assessment– Employment– Portfolios

Feedback

References

• Kearns, Ian. 2002. Code Red: Progressive politics in the digital age. London: IPPR.

• Graham, Steve. 2005. “Software-sorted geographies.” Progress in Human Geography 29 (5): 562-580. http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/research/research_projects/?mode=pdetail&pdetail=39455

• Schmoller, Seb. The software-sorted society. Fortnightly Mailing. http://fm.schmoller.net/2007/01/the_softwaresor.html .