IDENTITY - HE WHO NAMES CONTROLS
Thinking
about topic one was exciting. As I began reading White and le Cornu's articles,
I was immediately confronted by labels! Categorisations, statuses, yes
labelling by those who have the power to label. I am pasting below an
extract of what I wrote:
People are
"othered" when they don't participate in the digital world. But
sometimes "othering" is a personal choice. Anecdotal evidence suggests
that people choose not to participate out of fear of their personal information
being made public and a fear of being monitored by the proverbial "big brother".
Socialisation I think is key to one’s confidence and willingness to enter the digital world. Socio-political environments that are restricted and policed would most certainly contribute to fear as well distancing one’s self from the digital world. Self-stigmatisation as my colleague Lars put it would stem from a lack of competency as well from the socio-political context in which one finds one’s self.
A person may deliberately choose to live “off-the-grid” for example not storing intellectual property in the “cloud” and being suspicious of who controls the cloud. Both lack of competency or literacy as well together with a digital phobia might also account for self-alienation or self-imposed othering. Automated tele-machines for example were a "new frontier" for my parents. They experienced fear of losing their bank cards, fear of losing their funds, fear of being deemed uneducated because of their fear of automaton. "Migrating" to the automated as well the digital world is challenging for seniors.
Partial residency might imply engaging digitally on one’s own terms. Partial residency was clearly evident in some of the presentations created by my PBL7 colleagues. One could clearly see that their engagement with the digital world was purposive rather than recreational or social. There is partial-residency for example when digital engagement is limited to sms or emailing. The use of sms and ATMs can be seen as a "bridging behaviour" as my colleague Lars has suggested.
If we are to offer guidance, it would be important to first establish to what extent they have been exposed to digital technologies. Another step would be to allay their fears of traversing the digital divide. For example, I was fearful of crashing a network because I attended an underprivileged school and my engagement with computers was by choice after graduating high school. I attended computer training classes in order to improve my chances of gaining employment during a period when job reservation was legislated. So in guiding a person to using digital technologies, I would point out the benefits of being digitally literate as opposed to the person only seeing their digital engagement in the context of meeting job requirements.
What my PBL group found that while the terminology used by White and le Cornu related issues of identity and belonging, no mention is made of potential digital 'aliens' by the authors.
In conclusion, I would ask "what is the purpose of imposing digital identities?"
References:
White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9)
Socialisation I think is key to one’s confidence and willingness to enter the digital world. Socio-political environments that are restricted and policed would most certainly contribute to fear as well distancing one’s self from the digital world. Self-stigmatisation as my colleague Lars put it would stem from a lack of competency as well from the socio-political context in which one finds one’s self.
A person may deliberately choose to live “off-the-grid” for example not storing intellectual property in the “cloud” and being suspicious of who controls the cloud. Both lack of competency or literacy as well together with a digital phobia might also account for self-alienation or self-imposed othering. Automated tele-machines for example were a "new frontier" for my parents. They experienced fear of losing their bank cards, fear of losing their funds, fear of being deemed uneducated because of their fear of automaton. "Migrating" to the automated as well the digital world is challenging for seniors.
Partial residency might imply engaging digitally on one’s own terms. Partial residency was clearly evident in some of the presentations created by my PBL7 colleagues. One could clearly see that their engagement with the digital world was purposive rather than recreational or social. There is partial-residency for example when digital engagement is limited to sms or emailing. The use of sms and ATMs can be seen as a "bridging behaviour" as my colleague Lars has suggested.
If we are to offer guidance, it would be important to first establish to what extent they have been exposed to digital technologies. Another step would be to allay their fears of traversing the digital divide. For example, I was fearful of crashing a network because I attended an underprivileged school and my engagement with computers was by choice after graduating high school. I attended computer training classes in order to improve my chances of gaining employment during a period when job reservation was legislated. So in guiding a person to using digital technologies, I would point out the benefits of being digitally literate as opposed to the person only seeing their digital engagement in the context of meeting job requirements.
What my PBL group found that while the terminology used by White and le Cornu related issues of identity and belonging, no mention is made of potential digital 'aliens' by the authors.
In conclusion, I would ask "what is the purpose of imposing digital identities?"
References:
White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9)
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