Making Your Own Online Presence
Full course description
In today’s digital society, your online presence is a key part of your public identity. As soon as you search the Web, post on social media, sign up for a service, and blog about a recent experience, you start shaping your online identity and establishing a digital footprint that becomes your online personal brand. This course introduces you to the basics of analysing, reflecting on, and managing your digital identity. You will explore the benefits and downsides of having an online presence and you will develop skills, knowledge, and strategies for curating it. For example, you will analyse your ‘digital self’ by investigating how much information is publicly accessible. Based on this, we will discuss ways to shape your online identity and develop a professional presence. You will do this by learning how to design and structure an online portfolio using the blogging platform WordPress as well as how to write for an online audience. During the course, we will discuss both design and content aspects, including navigation, searchability, multimedia, and the integration of social media presences. The design and the content of the blog will be used as the basis for the assessment of this course. This blog will also be used throughout the BA programme since blog posts will be assigned on topics covered during the various courses. After completing the programme, you will have developed your own professional online profile which can be used when you apply for jobs or for further studies.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of how identities are constructed online;
- Be able to reflect on and manage your ‘digital self’;
- Use blog writing to effectively communicate and reflect upon your practice’;
- Use the content management system (CMS) platform ‘WordPress’ to design your own online presence and demonstrate a basic understanding of CMS functions for website development.
- Develop skills in designing user-friendly online presences.
Prerequisites
None
Recommended reading
Aresta, M., Pedro, L., Santos, C. & Moreira, A. (2015). Portraying the self in online contexts: context-driven and user-driven online identity profiles, Contemporary Social Science, 10(1), 70-85 https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2014.980840
Cotter, K. (2019). Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers and algorithms negotiate influence on Instagram. New Media & Society, 21(4), 895–913. https://doi-org.ezproxy.ub.unimaas.nl/10.1177/1461444818815684
Kirkup, G. (2010). Academic blogging: academic practice and academic identity. London Review of Education, 8(1), 75-84
Scolere, L., Pruchniewska, U., & Duffy, B. E. (2018). Constructing the platform-specific self-brand: The labor of social media promotion. Social Media+Society, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118784768
Walker, R. J. (2013). Blogging. Polity Press.
Whitmer, J. M. (2019). You are your brand: Self‐branding and the marketization of self. Sociology Compass, 13(3), e12662. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12662