{"id":212,"date":"2015-02-22T23:44:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T23:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybulmanontheweb.wordpress.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2015-02-22T23:44:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T23:44:38","slug":"the-online-me-authentic-identity-or-anonymity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008-2015\/2015\/02\/22\/the-online-me-authentic-identity-or-anonymity\/","title":{"rendered":"The online ‘me’: Authentic identity or anonymity?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

As I established in Topic 1<\/a>, the dramatic advance\u00a0of the Web in recent years has lead to many users becoming ‘residents’ on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Warburton<\/a> stresses how one’s identity on social media has become intertwined with their real life identity:<\/p>\n

\n

Increasingly persistent virtual presence on social media services […] has all but collapsed the boundary between being online and offline. We fashion the self through social interaction, community, and network affiliations\u00a0and in these ways we construct our identities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note that Warburton uses the plural form for “identities”. Unlike in the real world, on the Web, people have the power to create multiple representations of themselves.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, multiple identities\u00a0can mean simply\u00a0having presenting oneself differently on different sites to suit different purposes, such as having\u00a0a\u00a0personal identity\u00a0and a\u00a0professional identity.<\/p>\n

For this, while one may alter the information they disclose dependent on context, their identity ultimately remains the same.<\/p>\n