Mapping and managing my (scholarly) digital identity: The effort, the dividends, the risks and the unknown

Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Mapping and managing my (scholarly)
digital identity: The effort, the dividends,
the risks and the unknown
Workshop at the National Association of Distance Education
and Open Learning in South Africa (NADEOSA) Conference,
19 July 2017, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Paul Prinsloo
University of South Africa (Unisa)
@14prinsp

Subtitle: What it means to be human
in a hyperconnected, noisy era
Image credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lajpat_Nagar_marketplace_in_2006.jpg

I do not own the copyright of any of the images in this
presentation. I therefore acknowledge the original
copyright and licensing regime of every image used.
This presentation (excluding the images) is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License
This presentation represents my personal sensemaking and
is a work-in-progress. The examples I include from my own
digital footprint/shadow only serve to illustrate and not to
serve as a norm…

Source credit: https://www.slideshare.net/bonstewart/education-in-abundance-network-literacies-learning?qid=edf4a92b-23cd-413a-
894f-a3eb0889ba81&v=&b=&from_search=6
I want to acknowledge that the work of Bonnie Stewart
(e.g. 2016) was and continue to be important for my own
understanding of network literacies and learning

In this presentation I also made use of, and expanded on
Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2015). Academics' online
presence: a four-step guide to taking control of your
visibility. [Third edition]
Retrieved from http://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/2652/GoodierOnlinePresenceV3.pdf?sequence=11

1. Sources of data: in the nexus between footprints and shadows
2. How going digital and online impacts and will impact on our scholarly
and professional identities and lives
3. The different possibilities, implications and risks of being online as
distance education practitioner and scholar
4. Establish the extent and visibility of your own digital profile
5. Making informed decisions on what you want from having and
maintaining a digital profile and footprint
6. Improving the hygiene, wellness and quality of your digital ‘life’
7. Mapping a personal routine/practice
8. Consider the implications for teaching practice and student agency
In this workshop, we will (in no
particular order ) explore:

Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2015). Academics' online presence: a four-step guide to taking control of your visibility. [Third edition].
Retrieved from http://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/2652/GoodierOnlinePresenceV3.pdf?sequence=11
STEP 5
Stay
critical,
stay safe,
protect
the
privacy of
others

Our digital footprints….
Our digital shadows….

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/traces-snow-snow-lane-footprints-69808/
Our digital footprints….
The (un)informed and (un)intentional,
(non)actions we take

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/shadows-jogging-footprints-evening-183121/
Our digital shadows….
Content that are collected from us (by other human and
non-human actors) and that are stored, analysed,
combined with other sources of information (including
our digital footprints) to compile digital dossiers

Source credit: http://crackedlabs.org/en/corporate-surveillance/

Three sources of data
Directed
A digital form of
surveillance
wherein the
“gaze of the
technology is
focused on a
person or place
by a human
operator”
Automated
Generated as “an
inherent,
automatic function
of the device or
system and
include traces …”
Volunteered
“gifted by users
and include
interactions
across social
media and the
crowdsourcing of
data wherein
users generate
data” (emphasis
added)
Kitchen, R. (2013). Big data and human geography: opportunities, challenges and risks. Dialogues in Human
Geography, 3, 262-267. SOI: 10.1177/2043820613513388

Source credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/sunday-review/we-want-privacy-but-cant-stop-
sharing.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytopinion
… digital promiscuity
Also see Payne, R 2014, ‘Frictionless sharing and digital promiscuity’, Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11 (2), 85-102.

Our bodies are “leaking”
(both passively and actively)
“flows of data to an overlaying surveillant
assemblage where they are subject to analysis”
Smith, G. J. (2016). Surveillance, data and embodiment on the work of being watched. Body &
Society, 1-31. doi: 1357034X15623622

Our devices, our data, have become prosthetics, extensions
of ourselves – they constitute us, they allow us to function
in an increasingly networked world
See Green, B., & Hopwood, N. (2015). The body in professional practice, learning and education: a question of
corporeality. In B. Green and N. Hopwood (Eds.), The body in professional practice, learning and education (pp. 15-
33). New York, NY: Springer.Source credit: http://crackedlabs.org/en/corporate-surveillance/
Source credit: http://crackedlabs.org/en/corporate-surveillance/

Our data are not something
separate from our identities,
our histories, our beings.
Our data are an integral,
albeit informational part of
our being. Data are
therefore not something we
own and can give away. We
don’t own our data but we
are, increasingly, constituted
by our data.
See Floridi, L. (2005). The ontological
interpretation of informational privacy.
Ethics and Information Technology, 7(4),
185-200.
Image created from https://pixabay.com/en/steampunk-man-male-person-
fantasy-1809590/ and https://pixabay.com/en/matrix-network-data-
exchange-1013611/

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Shadow_-_Hiroshima.jpg
And our digital shadows and footprints
may live long after we are no more…

Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2015). Academics' online presence: a four-step guide to taking control of your
visibility. [Third edition]. Retrieved from
http://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/2652/GoodierOnlinePresenceV3.pdf?sequence=11

So what does the
internet know about
you?

Do a search on “your name” on the
following search engines and compare the
results…

• What results come up about you? How distinctive are they? Do you share a name
with someone in a different field?
• Are all the results from your institutions? Publications? Other resources? Online
profiles? Are none of the results relevant to you?
• If the results are nothing to do with you and your research output or institution, would
that be obvious to someone else looking for you?
• Consider where you would like to appear – in other words, what is your niche? If
someone searched for a topic, where would you like to appear?
• If you already do regular searches for your own name, your results in Google will
be influenced by your previous searches and those of other people, so also do
searches for your name in search engines which don’t have this personalisation
feature, such as Duckduckgo (http://duckduckgo.com/).
• It is not vanity but a necessity to set up Google alerts (http://www.google.com/
alerts) so you can automatically keep an eye on your developing presence and follow
your online footprint and shadow. It’s a very simple process — follow the link above
for a ‘how to’ explanation.
• If you don’t appear at all in the general search results, don’t panic. There are many
factors that affect what results appear on the search results page (see ‘How search
works’ for a brief overview). Searching by name alone has drawbacks.
Source credit: Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2015). Academics' online presence: a four-step guide to taking control of your visibility.
[Third edition]. Retrieved from http://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/2652/GoodierOnlinePresenceV3.pdf?sequence=11

Sourcecredit:http://crackedlabs.org/en/corporate-surveillance/

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/doors-choices-choose-open-decision-1587329/
Central to our strategy to take (more conscious) control of
our digital footprints and shadows we need to understand
the choices we have, the (sometimes irrational) reasons
we choose specific options, the downstream effects of our
choices and the choices we don’t have

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/nacelle-workers-wall-city-work-1888587/
The increasing disappearance of
public/private/professional/personal

So, how do you use, and if not, why not?
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143601516@N03/28011015990

Source credit: https://creativecommons.org/

Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2015). Academics' online presence: a four-step guide to taking control of your
visibility. [Third edition]. Retrieved from
http://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/2652/GoodierOnlinePresenceV3.pdf?sequence=11

Source credit: https://www.slideshare.net/bonstewart/education-in-abundance-network-literacies-learning?qid=edf4a92b-23cd-413a-
894f-a3eb0889ba81&v=&b=&from_search=6

Clipped from Bonnie Stewart (2016) - https://www.slideshare.net/bonstewart/education-in-abundance-
network-literacies-learning?qid=edf4a92b-23cd-413a-894f-a3eb0889ba81&v=&b=&from_search=6

The art of curation…
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143601516@N03/28011015990

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sculpture-bronze-the-listening-2275202/
The art/craft of curation firstly involves
learning to listen

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/bench-man-back-view-sorrow-pond-889222/
Curation means to be an audience, to take
time to be an audience, to care enough to be
an audience

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/megaphone-speaker-sound-message-2335573/
Curation also means to carefully amplify, to
share, to highlight, to call attention to…

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/adult-artists-audience-band-1836322/
Curation also means to support, to carry, to
applaud, to care…

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Argentina_road_sign_R7.svg
Critical and ethical curation also means to know
when not to share, not to repeat, not to amplify

STEP 5
Stay critical, stay
safe, protect the
privacy of others
Image compiled from https://pixabay.com/en/ball-protect-hands-euro-hand-665090/ and Goodier & Czerniewicz (2015)

Source credit: http://www.longviewoneducation.org/frontier-notes-on-metaphors-the-digital-as-landscape-and-playground/

While we might worry about being alert
online, we aren’t exposed to enough stories
about the physical and material implications
of the digital. It’s far too easy to think that
the online landscape exists only on our
screens, never intersecting with the physical
landscape in which we live.
Our students cannot be digitally literate
citizens if they don’t know stories about
the material implications about the digital.

Source credit: http://interactioninstitute.org/moving-from-inclusion-to-collaborative-solidarity/

Source credit: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/7/pedagogy-and-the-logic-of-platforms
I call the web "broken" because its primary architecture is based
on what Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff calls
"surveillance capitalism," a "form of information capitalism [that]
aims to predict and modify human behavior as a means to
produce revenue and market control.”

Source credit: https://theeduflaneuse.com/2017/07/14/digital-spaces-westworld/
“How do we want our children and students to see and interact with the world
of technology? In a world of big data, cyber attacks, and alternative facts,
perhaps it is with a combination of enthusiasm, caution, fear, confidence and
criticality.”

Source credit: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/pew-research-online-harassment/

Source credit: http://www.salon.com/2016/12/17/fake-news-and-online-harassment-are-more-than-social-media-byproducts-
theyre-powerful-profit-drivers/

Source credit: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms

STEP 5.1
Stay critical
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/safari_vacation/9716969314

Source credit: https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tide_pools_octopus.jpg

Source credit: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how-to-spot-fake-news/

Source credit: https://africacheck.org/

STEP 5.2
Stay safe
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pong/288491653

Source credit: http://www.wikihow.com/Delete-Browsing-History

Source credit: http://www.toptenreviews.com/software/internet/best-internet-browser-software/

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/metal-stairs-stairs-upright-access-1731677/
STEP 5
Protect not only your own privacy but also
the privacy of others
• Do not tag without permission
• Do not share if downstream use may be problematic,
embarrassing
• Watch out for one another
• Do no harm

(In)conclusion
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/hitchhiker-thumb-hoodie-backpack-691581/

We are increasingly witnessing four major
transformations:
a. the blurring of the distinction between reality and
virtuality;
b. the blurring of the distinction between human,
machine and nature;
c. the reversal from information scarcity to information
abundance; and
d. the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things,
properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of
interactions, processes and networks.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/window-dark-old-opinions-shadows-2387518/
Going ‘dark’ or ‘offline’ is increasingly impossible.
For a scholar, going ‘dark’ is not really an option.
We need to understand what is (not) in our
control , the (ir)rationality of our choices, the
(un)foreseen downstream use of our data

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/empty-abandoned-messy-grunge-scene-863118/
Thank you
Paul Prinsloo
Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)
College of Economic and Management Sciences,
Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood, P O Box 392
Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)
T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp

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Mapping and managing my (scholarly) digital identity: The effort, the dividends, the risks and the unknown