Reflecting on Topic 2: Multiple Online Personalities
Reflecting back on the topic of multiple personalities is difficult for me as although I think I have a solid grip of the topic area, the practical difficulties I’ve had this week have been very frustrating.
The topic of multiple online personalities to me first broke down to two basic identities: a profile with a real name (i.e. Facebook) or being online and anonymous. This could be either with a pseudonym (i.e. a screen name on Reddit) or without any login and hence total anonymity. The last of these was what intrigued me as not only did it appeal to the politics degree I’m pursuing but was also relevant to a blog I recently wrote here and as a result was something I was already reasonably informed about.
As a result I focused in on the issue of whether anonymity should be permitted quite heavily. Having read other blogs, and in particular the work of Yee-Ping (available here) I initially thought this may have been the wrong approach. What this blog did so well was to encompass the whole issue while also bringing in a personal perception to set it apart from others. By comparison I considered a narrow field in more detail but having taken time to consider the point I think both are as valid as each other as they can be contrasted and debated. Is this not the heart of academic study?
The main issues I’ve had this week have been practical. The first one is I’m still struggling to adapt to the style of blogs and learning how to balance an informative essay style with the more personable and entertaining nature of bloggers I read. I think this week I went too far towards informal perhaps and this will be something that I can address following feedback. Secondly I’ve had a lot of difficulty with the actual wordpress software this week, with drafts not saving, tag and topic options not appearing and the same buttons doing different things with every click. You may have seen 10 minutes where 7 versions of the same blog appeared which was obviously frustrating and took a long time to sort out. It’s been important to me, and more so than on any other module I’ve done, that my work is of a high quality for a couple of reasons. Its mainly as this module has taught us all that what you put on the internet is a representation of you and particularly with this blog, where I’ve started building a portfolio of work, putting sub par work up is something I want to avoid. This is particularly true when peers are reviewing my work as many have done. We have our own little UOSM2008 community and the better my work is, the prouder I am to show it off to individuals pursuing the same goal. It should, in theory, also improve our collective knowledge so there’s a big incentive to work hard and produce the best possible blog. For me this means leaving more time for potential technical hitches as well as more time to review work before posting.
In short plenty to chew on. Here’s a rabbit in a similar situation.
