Clearly over the course of my blog, I have come more transparent about who I am. When I started this blog I was assiduous in keeping my identity concealed. I did this because of the horror of academic blogging gone wrong. If I did something to cause myself problems, I didn’t want me to be found. 🙂
While I am much more up front about blogging, that has come in part because of my experience as a blogger. I’ve seen that I (overall) don’t do anything I don’t mind being public, even when people take those things differently than how I intended them. (Yes, one day, I am going to blog about facebook and losing an interview.)
If you have not yet decided whether to join the public spaces of the internet, you might want to look at Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics.
The authors, Miriam Posner and Brian Croxall, talk about the basics of an online presence, including familiarity, consistency, and participation.
They specifically discuss facebook, a Google profile page, Academia.edu, and more.
For those who are new to the internet, or just haven’t thought about it, Billie Hara’s Think Before You Tweet (or Blog or Update Status) continues this discussion.
Today I want to veer off their post just a bit and write about something that might detract from a positive and professional online presence, a presence that we so meticulously create and maintain, comments made online that publicly disparage students and colleagues. These comments can be intentional—meant to demean or criticize—or they can be random comments made in jest.
The article might be particularly important if you plan to tweet tonight’s First Year Chat with us, #fycchat, since it is on student apathy.
Update:
This post, “Live Blogging,” tells about a not-so-great experience with blogging, where it all worked out right in the end. Still, it made me think even more about the blog and my persona and my transparent-or-not identity.
Duly noted. 🙂