What is known as Social Media, or sometimes, ‘Web 2.0’, incorporates a wealth of technologies and tools that not only permit user-generated content, but depend on active contributions from the online community.
These might include blogs, wikis, social networks, twitter feeds and, of course, social networks - amongst others. However, participants in this digital community must make a decision from the moment they register and log-in to the service: which of their selves are they going to present to the other users? Are you the ‘work’ you, or the ‘personal’ you? It is unlikely they’re the same... we all behave slightly differently in the workplace than at home.
At the most basic level, do you want work colleagues to see personal photos of you in the bar, or on the beach, on Facebook? Even if your extra curricula activities are entirely harmless, do you want colleagues and possibly clients to know about them?
If you are politically active, could belonging to a particular group online have a detrimental effect on your work profile?
Is it appropriate for you to campaign against an arms manufacturer in your private life when they are a client of your company’s?
One of the fundamental drivers of the Internet is the ability to link information together, using ‘hyperlinks’. This allows us to find related articles, photos, videos, products and services quickly and efficiently. It also, however, means that others can quickly find information about us.
If you blog about work issues, should you use your real name, or a pseudonym? Even though you surely have no intention of saying anything negative about colleagues, the organisation or clients, it allows readers to connect to more information about you. Should you, alternatively, use a nickname for your private online presence?
Some try and keep LinkedIn for their work contacts and Facebook for their private contacts? But what do you do then if a client, colleague or manager tries to link with you in Facebook? If you refuse that friendship in the online space - will the client, colleague or manager take it personally?
Much of social media encourages and depends on honesty between users. However, if there is complete disclosure online, if you give your expertise away for free through blogs and wikis, where is your competitive advantage?
If you move into virtual worlds, the questions are even more complex:
- Should your avatar be the same gender/colour/height/weight/physique as you?
- Should it be ‘human’ - or is it acceptable to be a virtual penguin?
- Does the quality of your clothing matter in Second Life? Research suggests that, yes - appearance is every bit as important in the virtual world as it is in real life.
The younger amongst us, otherwise known as ‘Generation Y’ and the very young, ‘Net Generation’, will have grown up with these issues and are likely to be comfortable managing the various selves - either accepting that everything about one should be available to all one’s friends and colleagues, or by smoothly switching from one identity to another. There are, however, billions of us who have delved into the online world to a greater or lesser extent, and have already been faced with the dilemma of what we want different people to know about ourselves.
If you twitter on work related issues, is it appropriate to also twitter about the state of the trains, the weather, the joys of doughnuts or the cricket results?
Surely combining our work selves and private selves means that we all become a little closer - we learn things about colleagues we wouldn’t otherwise know - and potentially might find a kindred spirit who loves morris dancing when everyone else mocks it mirthlessly.
We might learn that a colleague has visited a particular country and could offer advice on restaurants in the city. We might understand better what our friends do at work, rather than simply summarising them as ‘working in the city/office/school/hospital/newspapers’.
Fundamentally, the issue boils down to one question: are we happy with our lives? If we are, then we have no need to hide one part of it from the other. We won’t be embarrassed by people knowing our hobbies... nor will we be embarrassed about telling our nearest and dearest exactly what it is that our daily work life involves.
Perhaps, therefore, the question is not one of which ‘self’ to use, but to get therapy to ensure that we have only one ‘self’ and that we’re completely happy with it.
Excellent questions. As to "one self": it's interesting how participating in social media makes one conscious of how many different personas one has. You are right, I should probably only have one, and should be working on that (perhaps that's a good life goal), but I don't and that can create problems offline as well. Online, I am becoming more of a single person, perhaps because I don't care what others think about my political and personal views on stuff. I think age tends to eliminate the fears of being "exposed." I think I have less to lose than a younger person by posting what I really think. Perhaps I'm wrong. At 63, I have been wrong many multiples of the times I have been right. Thanks for not abandoning this post from 2009.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I can't say that I have fully embraced the challenges posed either...but the question of a younger person having more to lose tends, according to research, to not be the case.
ReplyDeleteThe younger generation, so long as they're not specifically insulting their boss, tend to be quite happy to have one persona and accept that that's who they are.
Perhaps the bigger question is therefore when they (the younger generation) come into contact with us (let us say, the 'older generation') where we have conflicting views of what constitutes acceptable behaviour. That's when we tend to see problems...
I was thinking about the exact same stuff in January! I also have a long list of blogs I never publish, but I did happen to publish this one (linked on my name) - very much a discussion about the same issues of multiple selves vs. the palatable singular identity. I favoured the perspective that multiple identities is healthy, and the search for the single public one can't work. Unfortunately I reckon even if we were completely comfortable and happy with ourselves that we would still probably choose to present different personas to different people simply because of our awareness of their biases and tendencies. I worry that 'online' is homogenising us, and possibly smoothing off rough edges that would otherwise lead us to new and interesting places.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point of view Colin...I'm not a psychologist but there is, I believe, an argument that what we think might be other people's biases and tendencies will often be our own biases about their behaviour.
ReplyDeleteOn an extreme level, this might be akin to behaving in a particular way (with bravura, or with humility) when walking on a dark street and two skinheads walk towards us. We are assuming something about them from the way they look, and are assuming that they will assume things about us (that we're a threat, or an easy target etc.). In reality, they might not have share any of the characteristics of that youth culture stereotype, and all that has happened in fact is that our own prejudices have ensured we change our own behaviour.
In the online context the same might be true. If one is on Facebook does that mean one can be completely frivolous? If one is on LinkedIn does that mean everything must be conducted in a 'business-like' fashion?
There are some in my organisation who behave as if humour should be out-lawed in the workplace. There are some, like me, who believe that we are all human (though, arguably, some are more human than others) and underneath the corporate shell we can still enjoy a laugh together.