{"id":58,"date":"2014-10-08T20:49:38","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T20:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pippaedavies.wordpress.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2014-10-08T20:49:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T20:49:38","slug":"digital-visitors-vs-digital-residents-topic-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2033\/2014\/topic-1-2014\/2014\/10\/digital-visitors-vs-digital-residents-topic-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Visitors vs. Digital Residents (Topic 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The concepts of digital ‘visitors’ and digital ‘residents’ to classify today’s internet users.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Copyright \u00a9 2014 Quakersyard.co.uk – News Feeds, Online News.<\/p><\/div>\n

The previous ideas of digital native vs. digital immigrant proposed by Prensky (2001) are now outdated (which is not surprising considering how much of the technology used in 2001 is also outdated). Consequently, these definitions have been adapted to relate to the online activity of today.<\/p>\n

In order to understand what is meant by digital ‘visitors’ and digital ‘residents’, it is useful to understand the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘tool’ (White & Cornu, 2011). A\u00a0sense of ‘place’ on the web is described as being an environment in which we share thoughts and opinions, and interact and communicate regularly with other users (White, 2008). Hence from this term evolves the concept of a digital ‘resident’ – someone who lives a part of their life online. Comparatively, ‘tool’ relates to the use of the internet as a purely informative or educational experience, those who do this are considered digital ‘visitors’.<\/p>\n

We must however\u00a0understand that being a ‘resident’ does not automatically make you digitally literate (Curtis, 2013), much like those who are not literate in a language but can speak it fluently. Similarly,\u00a0contesting\u00a0the idea of the “digital divide” (Deursen & Dijk, 2010), we cannot assume that people of a certain age group or social class will correspond simply to one end of the ‘resident\/visitor’ spectrum.<\/p>\n

Hence it is important to note that this spectrum is continuous\u00a0(White & Cornu, 2011) and it is possible for one person to be both a ‘visitor’ and a ‘resident’. David White himself explains this in his video ‘Visitors and Residents’<\/a> (2014):<\/p>\n