Topic 1 – Digital ‘residents’ and digital ‘visitors’
The concept of the digital visitor and the digital resident is a progression from earlier work submitted by Prensky (2001) in which he suggested the existence of the digital native and immigrant. The difference between native/immigrant is much more concrete with natives being described as those born roughly between 1980 and 1994 that have grown up immersed in the digital world of video games, internet and computers and immigrants being those others that have had to assimilate themselves into the newer technology.
The digital resident/visitor theory grew around the criticisms levelled at Prensky’s work centring on the lack of empirical evidence to suggest a divide as pronounced as he was suggesting. Bennett et al. (2008) found that while Prensky’s ‘natives’ might have a superior level of ability in some areas such as e-mailing or word processing the majority were not involved in the creation of new media content for the web.
To address these criticisms the resident/visitor theory was put forward. Residents are described as those in the population that see the web as a ‘place’ in which they can socialise with those who share the same interests as themselves. This might take the form of blogging, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, forums and other social media facilities and allows the resident to effectively live out a proportion of their lives online.
Conversely, visitors see technology and the web as a collection of ‘tools’ to perform specific tasks without feeling the need for a permanent online presence. This reluctance to maintain a digital profile is often attributed to fears over security and/or privacy as well as a view that the broadcasting nature of social networking is egotistical (White and Le Cornu, 2011).
This is not to say that residents refuse to use the ‘tools’ available on the internet or that visitors will not use the web for private digital communications i.e. email or Skype; the two categories are not diametrically opposed.
This presents us with a much less rigid framework to describe the technological capabilities of individuals – one that does not use age as a specific distinguishing feature. Instead of the definitive ‘boxes’ of immigrants/natives, individuals are placed on a spectrum with resident and visitor at either end. Residents are capable of using the internet as a tool just as much as visitors, while visitors might have a greater grasp of technology than some residents.
Word count: 394
REFERENCES
Bennett, S., Maton, K. and Kervin, L. (2008) ‘The “digital natives” debate: A critical review of the evidence’, British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), pp. 775-786. [Online] DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00793.x (Accessed: 03 February 2014).
Prensky, M. (2001) Marc Prensky. Available at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/ (Accessed: 03 February 2014).
White, D.S. and Le Cornu, A. (2011) ‘Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement’, First Monday, 16(9), September [Online]. Available at: http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/ (Accessed: 03 February 2014).
