Judy's 338 Blog

2022 Summer May-June

Month: May 2022

Week 3 – PLN/V&R Map

May 28, 2022 / / 2 Comments

· Thread Discussion: How does data privacy and security limit and/or promote a PLN?

The online space is such a unique space that is full of potential for one to engage in a larger community in convenient and creative ways. Data privacy provides the foundation of trust for this medium of conversation and self-expression, securing one’s digital identity.

I would more likely post a photo with my friends if my account is set private and need requests to be my contacts. However, I am fully aware that once I leave traceable data online, it needs my active effort to make it fully disappear, not to mention if it was stored in others’ phone and then entangled with their data. In addition, if it was a photo with my friend, it was an entangled data about my friend and I in the first place at the moment of its publication.

The rise of social media began when I was about to graduate primary school, and I began to notice its power in connecting people together as the years pass by. I learned that I create more “traceable data” about myself and potentially people around me than I can think of, and vice versa. That obviously limited my will to express myself online when more and more people are added as my contacts. Not only that I am cautious of presenting out personal data, but also I am worried that when the data was static in itself, that my naiveness can stay there waiting for its republishing moment in the future. As a result, I post mostly photos about the natural world, and the majority of data I create are (hopefully) locations rather than opinions.

My trust towards data privacy online is fragile, and so is my trust towards people since not all my contacts are close and caring friends being cautious about data privacy. I have known relative who is able to let me know everything happening in their day, from what they had for three meals to what is their lunch schedule with whom in the next two days. A private detective cannot know any better about them than I do (jk).

I always have the feeling about things being out of control of the unexpectedness of data privacy, and people. I think those are what drag me back when I attempt to build a more active PLN and expand my professional learning network.

Week 2 – Blog Post #1

May 21, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I understand networking through social media as it means that an individual can make use of social media to meet others with similar interests/qualities/visions/connections to others/professions that can potentially help his/her/their personal and/or professional life. It can be a life-long learning and self-promoting process that involves “the attitude of a professional learner”, putting the learning ideas into action, and actually managing one’s online network (Rajagopal, Joosten-ten Brinke, Van Bruggen & Sloep, 2011); or it can be a life-long personal space for one to maintain and create connections with others.

The rise of the Information Age put individuals into a widely connected digital realm that constantly shares and updates new pieces of information and knowledge for each one who is involved. It seems inevitable to join this collective digital space (e.g., I am taking this course through online registration and I am now writing to others that share this digital social space).

I understand digital identity as one’s presence online. Often it seems that one is facing anonymous others when sharing information through social media, and the posts are static once published. For instance, I cringe when looking back at what I have posted during my teenage year. Besides, it can be problematic when one’s professional identity in real life collides with his/her/their digital identity as they may have a different context in time, space, and audience. That is, my young posts are no longer representing my current identity, and I am not the supposed audience checking them in the right time.

On the one hand, the idea of the global village is emphasized through the intensive usage of social media. It creates countless opportunities for one to join, as it surely provides powerful pathways for one to build strong and meaningful connections with others. On the other hand, it excludes those without access to the online space and take part in the individual social networking as well as the global economy context that requires a digital identity. It also put people’s privacy at risk when informed consent is rather ambiguous in an online context when data exposed in unwanted and unexpected ways involving more and more people. There seem to be lack of recognitions of the lack of boundaries for data privacy these days (Boyd, 2012).

References

Boyd, D. (2012). Networked privacy. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 348-350. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v10i3/4.4529

Rajagopal, K., Joosten-ten Brinke, D., Van Bruggen, J., & Sloep, P. B. (2011). Understanding personal learning networks: Their structure, content and the networking skills needed to optimally use them. First Monday, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v17i1.3559

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