Topic 1: Reflection

When I read the question for topic one, I was initially quite apprehensive, having never heard of the terms visitor or resident in a digital context before. Once I had read the White and Le Cornu paper I began to realise how I had never really considered the ways in which people may differ in using the web from a research perspective before. I found that the Youtube video of David White was the most useful tool in my understanding of the topic as I find it much easier to understand something when it has been explained to me out loud. I also like how he expanded on the point about being on a continuum between being a resident and a visitor and added another dimension to it. In her comment to me, Anna asked about where I think I fall within the continuum. I found this quite challenging to answer, as there does not seem to be a vast amount of research done on this matter so far and so it was hard to know how much of each characteristic I should count myself as having.

I thought that Catherine made a good point in her blog when she suggested that digital visitors may be less digitally skilled, as I was not sure whether this had been proved through any research I had managed to come across. It would be interesting to look into this, as I was discussing with Anna on her comment, I think that there is more scope for research in this field, perhaps by conducting more studies to gain factual information about our true online habits. This research could also look into what Freya mentioned in her post about socio-economic factors also having an effect on people’s the digital habits of today. This made me wonder about how White’s research had been conducted and whether he had considered these factors when gathering evidence for his claims.