I was pleased to see that Elizabeth Albrycht has chosen the issue of digital identity as the subject of her thesis.
The whole question of digital identity has been lurking in the back of my mind for some time - hence the nature of this blog, which is in part an experiment in the creation of digital identity. I have also intuitively felt that understanding digital identity, alongside the whole issue of Time is going to become one of the defining issues for understanding social media (I must find the time to post about Time). As a relatively new entrant to this whole Thing, what has struck me is the amount of effort required in setting up and maintaining digital identities and also the opportunities this presents to shape and control an identity in a way which differs from the way you do this in the off-line world.
As communications professionals it is has always been difficult understanding what people think and do and therefore how to talk to them. A whole industry - the market research industry - has been set up just to do this. Now, however, the audience has become schizophrenic. The ways in which we talk to people in the on-line dimension could end-up being totally different to the way we would talk to the same person in the off-line dimension - to say nothing of challenges presented by talking to virtual people in virtual worlds.
There is also the question of digital corporate identity when a corporation or brand decides it needs one in order to participate in social media or as part of an attempt to be more socialised. At the moment, it seems the only way brands or corporates have participated in social media is to establish their digital identity as the sum of a number of individual personal identities - for example individual corporate bloggers. I haven't seen a corporate or brand which has been able to develop an identity or voice for itself. Will it be possible to build a single digital corporate identity which can operate as an acceptable social citizen within social media - or in this new world can collective identity only exist as the sum of individual contribution?
I look forward to seeing more from Elizabeth on this.
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