Digital Identity, What is it?
Technology and social media have greatly impacted the world over the past few decades, where it has created a sense of community and belonging to people. Each and every person that uses these social media tools has his/her own unique identity which is represented over the respective network. This identity is a depiction of a person, and it can be created in a variety of ways such as : posts, shares comments, likes and interests to name a few. As defined by Eric Stoller, “a digital identity is your footprint on the web”.
An individual’s digital identity can be constructed in many ways depending on the need for it. For example, college students are encouraged to create a professional digital identity for themselves so that their they can showcase their skills and qualifications to potential employers, using tools such as LinkedIn. Taking the social impact into consideration – many users express their thoughts, opinions and beliefs on social media with the intention of identifying their place in society. This can either compliment or be detrimental to an individual depending on the content posted. According to Stoller, there have been many cases where people’s actions have caused the downfall of their careers. On the other hand, social media can be used to showcase growth and talent.
How do Personal vs. Professional Approaches to Digital Identity Affect Social Media use?
Professional identity is professional self-concept of an individual grounded in attributes, beliefs, motives, values and experiences (Jawed et at, 33). Many students develop certain constituents of professionalism when they are in college, since they have to prepare themselves for the “real world” by inculcating their digital networking into their professional identities. Interactions with certain communities of practice gives them guidance and meaning to their professional identity(Jawed et al, 34).
It is crucial that we identify the fine line between a personal and professional identity. Personal use of social media would be a way for us to connect and communicate with our loved ones and post content with the intention of keeping them updated, while professional use would be our best way to showcase our skills and talents throughout the professional networks. It is important to note that the communication methodologies differ greatly among the two. The intertwining of an individuals personal and professional networks is somewhat similar to a double edged sword – where it can provide substantial proof of an individuals excellence or ignorance.
A good strategy to ensure that you are in control of your information, is to review your privacy settings for each platform. This is a way that you can filter out content depending on the context of a given situation. For example, in the year 2000, homophobic jokes would have flown by without question. In 2021, you could be sued or taken into custody for making such remarks. By carefully filtering out information, the possibility of such an issue would be greatly reduced.
Impacts and Benefits of Digital Identities in Networked Publics
Digital identity is one of the cornerstones of digital economies. When taking organizations in both the private and public sectors into consideration, a digital identity can have various use cases. This ranges from e-voting, e-residencies, e-taxes, identification, health services to the exposure of the general public to be financially included in economic opportunities. Digital identities can protect these organizations from fraud and can benefit them by cost reduction. Developing countries can also use digital identities for inclusion efforts of the general public where they can create their digital identities for birth certificates, taking flights, creating bank accounts and money transfers to name a few.
When considering the benefits mentioned above, access and quality to these tools are important. A “good ID” can be from a government level, a trusted organization in the private sector, or from a personal digital trail. It is important to understand that trust, transparency and data security should be practiced with corporations from the private and public level when they obtain the permission to use peoples digital identities.
Digital identities are dual use technologies – in the wrong hands it could be misused. This imposes the question of the quality of our digital identity; does the identity give you control over how your data would be used? if so, how can we be protected?. In order to answer these questions, we should ask ourselves if whichever entity is providing the platform for digital identity has a governance framework for it to ensure the consideration of ethics and priorities.
Can digital Wallets Provide Trust in Networked Publics?
Ethical use is always important for technologies, especially digital identities. How these technologies are implemented is important. There are many organizations that have taken steps to provide trust when it comes to digital wallets, where its users can own and control the use of their data. Learning Machine is such a company that works with institutions to issue credentials to your digital wallet that is tied to your identity, which you can permission out.
Trust, transparency and data security should always be practiced by organizations on a public and private level. Measures should also be taken from a federal level to ensure that the law that governs digital wallets are enforced by the supreme courts. Even though a digital wallet seems like a safe and convenient resource, one would always be subjected to privacy concerns.This is where the double edged sword metaphor would come into play.
References
Stoller, Eric. “What is Digital Identity?.” YouTube, uploaded by University of Derby, 25 Nov 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0RryRbJza0&feature=youtu.be
Jawed, Saira., et al. “Digital Professional Identity: Dear Internet! Who Am I.” Education for Health, vol. 32, no. 1, 2019, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=f34833d6-e9b2-48ae-945a-277dfff93bba%40sessionmgr4007
World Economic Forum. “Davos 2019 – Press Conference The Value of Digital Identity for the Global Economy and Society.” YouTube, uploaded by World Economic Forum, 5 Feb. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-V7lyxrOmw&feature=youtu.be.