For #UptakeICT discussion with Cristina Costa, 16th May

1. Building a professional digital
identity
By @lisaharris for #UptakeICT 16/5/2017

2. Plan
• Building your digital identity
• Growing your networks – the value of proactive
contribution
• Managing personal v professional identities
• What employers are looking for
• Useful resources

3. Is the glass half empty?
How can we be effective learners/researchers in a world where we are:
• increasingly swamped with data
• restricted by our filter bubbles to engaging with “people who are like us”
• concerned about privacy issues, identity theft, trolling…?

4. Or is it half full?
By actively developing and managing our digital footprint we can:
• showcase our work
• build our networks to “stand out from the crowd” and enhance our employment
prospects or new business development
• Promote “digital citizenship” by
• behaving responsibly online to set a good example
• Sharing useful resources with our networks
• Raising awareness of, or support for, good causes
• Calling out fake news, or alarming trends which favour opinion over fact

5. Online Identity
Lisa Harris, Digital Educator. Connect @lisaharris /
L.J.Harris@soton.ac.uk
Finding me online:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Slideshare
Web Science Institute
Innovation in HE blog

6. About.me/lisa.harris
6

7. Academic digital networks
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/03/04/academic-profile-services-many-mirrors-and-faces-for-a-single-ego/

8. Which network/s to focus on?
• LinkedIn (seems obvious but see this Observer piece - The Death of
LinkedIn )
• Mendeley – reference management and network building
• Orchid – links you to your networks via a single identifier
• Academia.edu – over 50 million members world-wide
• Others?

9. Linking your networks with ORCID

10. Social networks
Commmunicating Your Research with Social Media:
A Practical Guide to Using Blogs, Podcasts, Data Visualisations and Video
by Amy Mollett, Cheryl Brumley, Chris Gilson, and Sierra Williams
• create and share images, audio, and video in ways that positively impact your
research
• connect and collaborate with other researchers
• measure and quantify research communication efforts for funders
• provide research evidence in innovative digital formats
• reach wider, more engaged audiences in academia and beyond

11. Give before you receive
• Developing a ‘digital footprint’ which demonstrates our skills is not an overnight
task. Chris Brogan talks about ‘paying it forward’ – meaning we should give
before we receive.
• Long term benefit comes from focusing on the value we bring to our network, not
what we take from it.
• Don’t connect with someone on LinkedIn just when you need a recommendation.
Share useful information with your network, and you will benefit when you need
help in return.
• Watch the discussion with Southampton PhD students on paying it forward here

12. Identity is complex- what is really new?
(1) actual or objective self —the way a person actually is
(2) self-image —the way a person sees themself
(3) ideal self (self-actualisation) —the way they would like to be seen
(4) social self— the way they think others regard them
Onkvisit, S., and Shaw, J., 1987. Self-concept and Image Congruence: Some Research and Managerial Implications. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 4 (1), 13 – 23.

13. Questions for you
• Which social networks do you use professionally? What specific value
do they provide to you?

14. Single or multiple digital identities?
• A single identity is easily identifiable as us across all platforms.
• Multiple identities may be used for different contexts (such as
professional and personal) or on different platforms
• Whichever we choose, we make active choices over what we:
• create, post and share,
• contribute to communities and social networks,
• like and comment on,
• respond and reply to or repost/retweet
• Some views on this topic from Southampton students

15. Single Identity
Advantages:
• Consistent presentation of image (good personal branding).
• Trustworthy (no separation of personal and professional, nothing to hide).
• High levels of integrity / authenticity.
• Easy for others to find and connect
Disadvantages:
• The personal and professional, formal and informal are mixed up, which can lead
to ‘unintended’ negative effects.
• Is it really possible to be authentic online? Check out this Guardian summary of
the key issues.
• Higher risk of identity theft. (Cifas, the UK’s fraud prevention service, recorded
172,919 identity frauds in 2016)
• Lack of privacy (you leave a traceable digital footprint).

16. Multiple identities
Advantages:
• Can separate the personal from the professional
• Improved privacy and security
• Can manage your identity to suit your contexts
• Less risk of ‘unintended’ negative effects
Disadvantages:
• More profiles and accounts to manage and check
• Higher risk of appearing inauthentic or of lacking integrity

17. Anonymous identity
Advantages:
• Increased freedom of self-expression
• High levels of privacy and security
• Can provide a voice to oppressed or threatened people whose safety may
be compromised if their true identity is revealed.
• Very small risk of ‘unintended’ negative effects
Disadvantages:
• Untrustworthy
• High risk of appearing inauthentic or of lacking integrity
• Enables Catfishing, Trolling, Cyber-bullying and abuse

18. A question for you…
Which is your preference – single, multiple or anonymous digital
identities?

19. The challenge
A standard CV is no longer sufficient to stand out from the crowd in a global and
rapidly evolving job market.
“We are currently preparing students for jobs that
don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t
been invented, in order to solve problems we
don’t even know are problems yet.”
- Karl Fisch, “Did You Know”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

21. Recruitment in a digital world
According to a 2016 study by Jobvite:
• 96% of recruiters use social media in the hiring process
• 80% had been positively influenced by a candidate’s professional
social network profile
• 78% had been negatively influenced towards a candidate’s
inappropriate use of social media
• More input here from Southampton students on employer
expectations

22. Employer branding – it’s not all about you!
• The best candidates might not be actively looking for a new job (up to
90% of the workforce at any time)
• Social media can identify the best talent , encourage conversation and
build relationships between prospective employees/employers
• Enables recruiters to promote their company as “a great place to
work”

23. Some student examples
These students studied a Flexible Learning interdisciplinary module
called ‘Living and Working on the Web’
Building their own professional digital profiles and blogging about the
experience is a key aspect of this course.
• Haley Fairclough, 2016 Psychology graduate.
• Vicky Gilson, 2016 Modern Languages and European Studies
graduate.
• Ellie Hamilton, 2016 Web Science graduate.

24. Finally…
“We are now in the transitional stage of employers gradually reducing
their prejudice in the hiring of those who studied at a distance, and
moving in favor of such ‘graduates’ who, in the workplace, demonstrate
greater proactiveness, initiative, discipline, collaborativeness – because
they studied online.”
Fredric Litto, Professor Emeritus of Communications, University of São
Paulo, in a recent Pew Internet Report, The Future of Jobs

25. A final question for you
• In what ways will you enhance your professional digital profile after
this session?

26. More Resources
• Learning in the Network Age MOOC starts July for 2 weeks
• Power of Social Media MOOC started 8/5 for 2 weeks
• A detailed First Monday review of Facebook’s position on authenticity of
identity
• This BBC report discusses the nature of the “dark web” and the advantages
and disadvantages that anonymity offers.
• Harris, L. and Rae, A. (2011) “Building a personal brand through social
networking”, Journal of Business Strategy
• These two 30 minute BBC Four radio broadcasts explore the possibility of
Online Identity Crisis and what online Authenticity involves.