Blog Post #2-Digital Identity

1.What is a digital identity?

The “digital identity it’s sort of your footprint on the web” (Eric Stoller, 0:25, What is digital identity?). The footprint means the blog you post, the portfolio you create, or the interaction among you and your friends could all demonstrate your presence. Your individual digital identity could show others your preference, your information, your personality; it even records your state of life, whether your are in progressing, or marching time, or fall behind. The digital identity is another you and it exists in digital form other than real life.

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

The personal approach of digital identity is mainly focus on self-preferences. The individual social media always record what they think about themselves instead of what others think about them. The person has rights to decide whether he/she wants to say or post something on their social media; also, the contents of the posts are only limited by laws and legislation. In the other words, the personal use of digital identity in social media has high degree of freedom, people could be more enjoyable when using digital identities in social media. However, too much enjoyment of freedom can easily lead to addiction so that a lot of time would be wasted. In contrast, the professional use of digital identity in social media is mainly focus on “the way others and the society perceives us” (Saira, J., Usman, M., & Rahila, Y. 2019). The professional approach would be defined more by outside world. For example, an unknown field expert mainly focuses on biology area with his/her social media, his/her online communications always be proceeded with other groups of biologists, his digital identity is related to biology as well. These points make others to define that the expert is a biologist. Therefore, the professional approach has strict limitation to their professional areas, people with this approach may not feel enjoyable with social media, but they can learn a lot in life-long time. Finally, the main difference between personal and professional approach is personal defines itself, and professional is defined by others.

3.How do digital identities converge in networked publics?

As the rapid development of present social, more and more people are connecting with internet. As people recording their daily life on social media, or filling forms online for business, or sending resumes for applying works, or using online payment for shopping. All these approaches include digital identities but not all the social media are safe enough to protect your privacy. Some recordings of these digital identities would finally flow into and converge in networked publics due to unsafety network environment. Therefore, the public network would have your information and these information are searchable. That is why sometimes people would receive phone fraud. In the other perspective, the digital identity is really convenience to use when doing online signature, or payment, or some other business, so more and more people come to accept the popularity of digital identity. Therefore, the preference of people and popularity of digital identity are also the reasons why it converges in networked publics.

4.What are the impacts and/or benefits?

The digital identity could bring both people and economics with benefits. “With trustworthy digital identity, you can build many digital services that make your life much easier” (Davos, 5:58, Press conference the value of digital identity for the global economy and society) People could do online payment with e-banking, to apply online study permit or visa with the fingerprint, which was recorded before and saved in the system, to learn knowledge through e-school. For the economics all over the world, people from different countries could sign any digital documents or agreements effectively and efficiency when trading so that a lot of time could be saved. The time saved could be used to negotiate more business and increase more opportunities of bringing in revenue. Meanwhile, as people leave their digital identities, she/he could be found easily by searching and comparing the digital identities. The cooperation among countries, and the connection between people and society could become tighter and save both time and labor.

5.Can a digital wallet provide trust in networked publics?

The digital wallet could be trustworthy, and it also could be suspected. It depends on what platform that people pay for, also depends on how secure that the digital wallet company could achieve. If the website, or the APP which people purchase on is not a secure, legal or even it is a fraud site, the digital wallet is definitely dangerous. If the security of the digital wallet company is not guaranteed, the digital wallet is suspect either. Conversely, If people purchase on a standard website and choose a reliable company to use the digital wallet, the reliability of digital wallet would be much higher. However, with our current technology, there is no an absolute way to protect our privacy.

6.Discuss the values of privacy, security, the sense of agency, and what is good for communities as laws, civil society, and professional spaces engage the accountability of digital identity.

People’s privacy stands for something that people do not permit others to know,  it could represent human dignity. If the privacy is reveled,  human would suffer from terrible influences. Therefore, the security of protecting privacy becomes even more important. As the level of security becomes higher, the chances of privacy leakage would become lower. The sense of agency is referred to human want to control the security and their privacy. As the level of security becomes higher, the controllability would be better. As the controllability becomes better, human would feel more safety.

As the 2nd question mentioned, the professional uses of digital identities have strict limitations to their professional areas and not enjoyable to use social media. The communities such as laws, civil society or professional spaces are obvious examples. The way to make them more engage in the accountability of the digital identity is trying to mention some interesting facts or cases that relate to their fields to make their social media or communities become more vitality.

Reference:

Saira, J., Usman, M., & Rahila, Y. (2019). Digital professional identity: Dear Internet! Who am I? Retrieved January 30, 2021, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31512590/

Eric Stoller. “What is digital identity?”. YouTube, uploaded by University of Derby, 25 Nov 2016 of publication, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0RryRbJza0&feature=youtu.be & 0:25.

Davos. “Press conference the value of digital identity for the global economy and society”. YouTube, uploaded by World Economic Forum, 6 Feb 2019 of publication, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-V7lyxrOmw&feature=youtu.be & 5:58