Week 6: What do our social networking practices tell us about ourselves? What kind of online presence do we want to maintain?

I hope last night’s peer review workshop helped you narrow your focus and finalize your methods for the Online Identity Analysis assignment. I know that some of you are still feeling overwhelmed by your data or are struggling to make connections between our class readings and your individual analysis, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like another opinion on your tentative findings.

I have updated the course calendar with the list of “discussion superheroes” and “tech demos” you signed up for last night, so make sure those items are on your calendars, too. Just to reiterate what I said last night, the “discussion superhero” role does not entail a formal presentation; it just means that you should be a little over-prepared for class that night. Do some outside reading, draft a few discussion questions to get the conversation started, or meet with your fellow superhero to work through some difficult concepts you encountered. As for the tech demos, plan on taking 10 minutes (and definitely no more than 15) to introduce your chosen tool and help us think about how we might integrate it into our digital workflows.

Next week, David and Will will be our discussion superheroes, and KT will demonstrate Tumblr for us. In addition, we’ll wrap up the Online Identity Analysis assignment, start talking about the Professional Portfolio assignment, and dig into our third book.

To read before class:

• A Networked Self, Introduction and Part 1 (pp. 1–99)
• “Negotiating multiple identities on the social web: Goffman, fragmentation and the multiverse,” by Corinne Weisgerber (a nice follow-up to our Week 5 discussion about multiple selves)

To do before class:

• Finish the Online Identity Analysis project and submit it via Google Drive before you come to class. (If you would like to use your deadline extension on this project, let me know ASAP.)
• Keep blogging! Try using one of the articles in A Networked Self as a springboard, or share a link to an interesting article you found while working on your Online Identity Analysis project.

Bonus reading (as time and interest permit):

• “Tumblr Is Not What You Think,” by Adam Rifkin
• “Tenth Grade Tech Trends,” by Josh Miller
• Garry Tan’s response to Josh Miller

If you want to discuss your Online Identity Analysis project before you submit it, please come see me during my (slightly adjusted) office hours (M 9–12, T 1–4) or email me to arrange another a meeting at another time.

UPDATE: Here are the files we’ll use for our HTML workshop. You don’t need to do anything with these until you come to class.